Covid-19 death registrations in England and Wales look to have levelled off, in fresh evidence the recent wave has peaked.
Some 650 deaths registered in the week to November 4 mentioned coronavirus on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
This is broadly unchanged from the 651 registrations in the previous week, but also 5% below the 687 that were registered two weeks earlier.
Deaths began to rise in mid-September, driven by the latest wave of Covid-19 infections.
But this increase looks to have peaked in mid-October – and at a level below those seen in previous waves of the virus.
During the summer wave, deaths in England and Wales peaked at 810 in the week to July 29.
And at the start of the year, weekly deaths peaked at 1,484.
This was well below the numbers seen during the first stage of the pandemic, before the roll-out of vaccines, when the weekly total topped 8,000.
Separate ONS figures published last week showed that an estimated 1.3 million people in private households in England were likely to have had coronavirus in the week to November 1, down from 1.6 million in the previous week.
Wales has also seen a fall, with 72,400 people estimated to have had Covid-19 in the same period, down from 77,500.
It could take another couple of weeks for the drop in infections to be mirrored clearly in the number of death registrations.
This is because the trend in registrations tends to lag behind the trend in infections, due to the length of time between someone catching the virus and becoming seriously ill, as well as the time it takes for deaths to be registered.
