Deaths relating to alcohol surged to their highest level on record in England and Wales last year.
There were 7,423 deaths from alcohol-specific causes registered in 2020, a 19.6% increase compared with 2019 6,209 deaths and the highest annual total since records began in 2001.
The surge in fatalities relating to drinking in 2020 comes in a year dominated by the Covid pandemic with England and Wales spending much of the year in a form of lockdown.
Between 2001 and 2019, the number of alcohol-specific deaths increased by an average of 2.1%, the Office for National Statistics data showed.
The rise seen in 2020 is greater than any other year since 2001.
Provisional analysis also shows that in England men's alcohol-related deaths were 4.2 times higher in the most deprived local areas than the least deprived local areas - 34.1 deaths per 100,000 compared to 8.1 deaths respectively.
For women in England the rate was 3.2 times higher in the most deprived areas (12.6 deaths per 100,000) than in the least deprived (3.9 deaths per 100,000).
The National Statistics definition of alcohol-specific deaths includes only those health conditions where each death was a direct consequence of alcohol misuse (that is, wholly-attributable deaths).
Most of these are longer-term conditions associated with continued misuse of alcohol.
The increase in deaths in 2020 is more likely to be attributed to those with previous history of alcohol misuse or dependency, the Office of National Statistics states.
Data from Public Health England show that consumption patterns have changed since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with alcohol consumption a contributing factor to hospital admissions and death.
