Many covid deaths in care homes are unrecorded

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AT A CARE home high in the hills above Cannes, on the French Riviera, the first report at the end of March was of 12 deaths. A week later, the toll had surged to 24. The town’s undertaker was overwhelmed. Families began to panic. By April 30th, 38 of the original 109 residents at the care home were dead, from confirmed or suspected covid-19. In care homes across France 9,471 deaths had been recorded by May 5th—nearly two-fifths of the country’s official covid-19 death toll.

This grim situation became apparent in France when it started publishing statistics for care-home deaths on April 1st. Britain, which began to do this four weeks later, is only now uncovering a similar calamity. When it first added care-home casualties, the official death toll jumped by almost 4,000 in a day. On May 5th the total in Britain, at 29,427, overtook Italy’s tally (which does not yet include them) to become Europe’s highest.

How many...