The National Bureau of Statistics has seen a sharp rise in the death toll from heavy drinking in England and Wales in 2020, which "coincides with the start of the pandemic" and the various lockdowns. 

In England and Wales, the annual number of alcohol-related deaths peaked in 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics (ONS) revealed on Thursday, seeing a very sharp increase in this figure from the first lockdown linked to Covid-19 in March.

"This increase coincides with the start of the pandemic"

In 2020, 7,423 people died as a result of excessive alcohol consumption, an increase of about 20% from the previous year's data, the ONS said.

This is the highest number of annual deaths recorded since the organization recorded them, 2001. The alcohol death rate in the first quarter of 2020 (January to March) was " statistically similar to those of previous years ", underlines the ONS," but the rates for the second quarter, third quarter and fourth quarter of 2020 were significantly higher than those of all other years ".

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"The ONS indicates that this increase coincides with the onset of the pandemic," said Sadie Boniface, director of research at the Institute of Alcohol Studies, as well as with a series of three lockdowns, the first of which was announced by the British government on March 23, 2020. The deaths recorded by the ONS are mostly linked to long-term addiction problems: 80% were due to liver disease triggered by alcohol, when only 10 % were caused by dangerous behaviors or mental states related to alcohol and 6% were due to alcohol poisoning.

Consequences which "remain largely to be determined"

"This means that the increase is not explained by the fact that people who previously drank at lower risk levels increased their consumption during the pandemic," Sadie Boniface analyzed. According to her, the causes of this "alarming" finding are rather to be found on the side of the increase in consumption among people who already drank a lot, but also the lack of "access to care". "For example, liver disease is often an emergency, but people may have been afraid to go to the emergency room because of the virus," she explains.

However, the researcher invites to closely monitor the evolution of people who began to drink during the pandemic, arguing that "the consequences on health of these important changes in the habits of alcohol consumption remain largely to be determined" .