YORK’S Covid death toll has reached a grim new milestone.

Precisely 600 residents from the City of York Council area are now calculated to have died while suffering from the disease since the start of the pandemic.

Just over three quarters of the deaths involved people aged over 75 and almost two thirds of the fatalities happened in hospital, with just over a quarter in care homes.

The figures are revealed in the latest quarterly ‘Covid 19 daily data tracker,’ which has just been published by the council.

It says the figure of 600 Covid deaths comes from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and relates to the number of death certificates on which Covid-19 is recorded, up to September 30, 2023.

It includes York residents who died outside the city’s boundaries and whose deaths were recorded outside.

READ MORE:

Of the 600 deaths, 386 happened in hospital, 158 in care homes, ten were in a hospice and 46 were at home or elsewhere.

The cumulative number of deaths per 100,000 of population in York was 285 - lower than the national average of 345.

According to separate registrar data, the ages of York residents who died ranged from 30 to 104, with an average age of death of 81.5.

It said 77.8 per cent of York’s deaths involved people aged 75-plus and 49.8 per cent of people who died were male.

The tracker report said that in the first three weeks of September, no Covid deaths were recorded in York.

The majority of Covid deaths happened in the first two years of the pandemic.

A report in The Press in February 2022 said the council’s latest Covid data tracker report showed then that 462 York residents had so far died with Covid.

The latest report says that the total number of Covid deaths at the end of June, 2023, was 593.

It also says 75,000 Covid ‘episodes’ were recorded in York from the start of the pandemic up to October 5, 2023.

That is a rate of 35,509 per 100,000 people, below the national average of 37,058 and regional average of 36,507.

The latest official validated rate of new Covid cases in York in the last week of September was 35.5 per 100,000 - higher than the national average of 28.3 and regional average of 30.3.

The Covid rate is highest in the 90+ age group, with 235 per 100,000, followed by the 75-79 age group with 123 cases per 100,000.