The Liverpool City Region’s weekly coronavirus death toll fell again at the beginning of December, figures released on Tuesday have shown.
In the week up to December 4 there were 55 deaths from Covid-19 recorded across the region, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It was the fifth consecutive week in which the city region saw a decline in the number of Covid-related deaths, but the pace of decline appears to be slowing with the week seeing only eight fewer deaths than the previous one.
This would mirror the trend in cases of Covid-19, which have plateaued since the end of November.
The ONS figures record all deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate, meaning it was either the primary cause of death or a contributing factor.
More than a third of the week’s deaths occurred in Sefton, which saw 20 people die of Covid-19 including five in care homes.
This was a higher weekly death toll than anywhere else in the city region and means Sefton now has the highest Covid-19 mortality rate of any borough for the whole of the pandemic.
Sefton was also one of only two boroughs to see a rise in weekly deaths for the week up to December 4, having recorded 18 deaths in the previous week.
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The other borough that saw its death toll rise was Knowsley, which saw an increase from four Covid-19 deaths to six.
Liverpool itself saw a slight fall in deaths, from 17 to 15, as did Halton, St Helens and Wirral.
Halton saw just two deaths during the week, down from six, while St Helens recorded four, down from seven. Wirral recorded eight deaths, down from 11.
The latest figures mean that the city region’s death toll for the whole crisis now stands at 2,773, or 15.8% of all deaths in the region this year. Around a third of those have come since the second wave started at the beginning of September.
