That is quite the news, United Kingdom! Recent research finds that an increasing number of individuals in England and Wales have been found in a decomposed form long after they have passed away. This is a tendency that has been seen over the course of the last four decades, and the isolation that is associated with the coronavirus pandemic has made the situation even more severe. Those who find this upsetting should hold off until they have heard all of the details.
Find out more by reading on.
Researchers from the University of Oxford, Public Health Scotland, Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene, and Tropical Medicine in the UK examined the statistics that were registered for mortality between the years 1979 and 2020, using data obtained from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK. The results of their investigation are quite fascinating.
Through the utilization of two International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, namely R98 for “unattended death” and R99 for “other ill-defined and unknown causes of mortality,” the researchers were able to arrive at an estimation. They discovered that there has been a consistent increase in the occurrence of these types of deaths, which indicates that a greater number of individuals are passing away and decomposing before they are discovered. In addition, these occurrences correlate with times when the United Kingdom was placed under lockdown in an effort to prevent the transmission of COVID-19.
While mortality from all other causes decreased from 1979 to 2020, the opposite was seen for deaths from R98 and R99 (or ‘undefined deaths’), with men more affected than women; […] there was a sharp rise in these deaths in both sexes but in men particularly in the 1990s and 2000s, coinciding with a time when overall mortality was rapidly improving, explained the researchers.
At this point, the researchers are interested in seeing further work done to monitor this trend. An ONS code that is designed particularly for corpses that are decomposing when they are found would be a good place to begin. The findings of the study were made available in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
