The figures for the week ending Jan 28 also show that the number of deaths where Covid is the primary cause has been falling in recent weeks.

It is now 71.2 per cent of registered virus deaths, compared to 72.9 per cent the previous week and 77.4 per cent in the week ending Jan 14. It means hundreds of people included in the official weekly ONS Covid figures died primarily from other causes.

The data also continue to show a growing disparity between the numbers of deaths reported each day on the Government’s Covid dashboard and how many are eventually officially recorded in the ONS figures. In the first four weeks of 2022, there were 5,173 deaths reported on death certificates compared to 6,140 on the daily dashboard. 

Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: “We now have ONS-reported deaths data for the first four weeks of 2022, and there are some interesting observations.

“Firstly, total deaths from all causes are lower than the average for 2015 to 2019, so we are not seeing more deaths so far this year than we would expect for this month in the years before Covid.

“And, in an increasing proportion of deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test, the certifying doctor has not considered Covid to have contributed to the cause of death. These figures are based on date reported, not date of death, so will be less biased by time to report delays that can affect recent data based on date of death.”

Deaths ‘peaked at about 200 a day’

Dr Raghib Ali, a senior clinical research associate at the University of Cambridge’s MRC epidemiology unit, said that it was “now clear” that deaths had peaked at about 200 a day, about one third of even the best case scenarios put forward by modellers.

Modelling released before Christmas suggested deaths would only be kept to such a low peak if the country went back to step one of the roadmap, which included the rule of six, limits on weddings and funerals, and no indoor mixing outside bubbles.

Dr Ali said there had been no excess deaths seen with the omicron variant, unlike previous strains.

A total of 1,385 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending Jan 28 mentioned Covid, down seven per cent on the previous seven days and the first week-on-week fall so far this year.