Updated and interactive data on the coronavirus crisis for charities and funders

We have built an updated and interactive dashboard, to help charities and funders see the places that are currently suffering the most from Covid-19, and those that have underlying factors—such as age, health, ethnicity, economic indicators—which may put them at risk.

We’ve done this because there are large amounts of data available from government and official sources, which tell us about the health and economic vulnerability of certain places and communities, but this data is spread across numerous sources and can be hard to compare.

You can use our fully interactive dashboard by clicking here.

NPC’s Covid-19 data for charities and funders is supported by the Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK.

How to use the data

We are all working together to fight the crisis but every charity, every funder, and every cause is different. Different data within our data set will have different weight to different organisations. We have tried to make each individual type of data as clear and comparable as possible, while remaining as distinct as possible. Users can choose which factors matter most to them, or which factors they are best equipped to engage with.

We have included a selection of factors—from health, age, ethnicity, and economic indicators—but this is not intended to be a comprehensive data set. Nor is it intended to provide an index of the most affected or most vulnerable people and places in England.

We have built this data set using ONS data, because their data accounts for deaths that have occurred not just in hospitals, but in care homes, other facilities, and in private accommodation. Figures are not released daily, like the Covid-19 cases data, but rather weekly. You can download our full data set here, as well as a glossary explaining the terms used in our data set here. Our data focuses solely on England at this stage.

We are aware of similar work going on. For example, work is being done by British Red Cross and others on  indexes of vulnerability. These are very useful and we advise charities and funders to also explore them if they can.

You can see some of our analysis of the themes that we identified in our data set, in the example findings section of this page.

Get involved and how we can help you

We want to expand the range of data available to charities and funders.  We are exploring including more  funder data, plus data on charities, mutual aid groups and social enterprises. We also want to explore demand data from charities, to better understand what they are experiencing on the ground and to set that against the official figures. We can only do this with the support of others, so if you see the potential of this work and want to be involved, please get in touch.

If you are a funder and you need help to further analyse this data, or to use it to help inform your giving in a particular region or charitable area, get in touch. To contact us to discuss what services we could provide to you, click here.

Example findings

We have identified some key themes and issues from analysing this data set. In your organisation, you will bring your own perspective to the data and see themes that we haven’t, which are more relevant to your cause and location. These examples are intended to show you what can be done by looking at data through this source and others. Our analysis below relies upon data from the 10th of April. We hope to update this analysis soon, but have kept these findings here as an indicator of what charities and funders could do themselves.

London is the worst hit, but potentially has fewer vulnerable people

As of 10 April, Greater London has the most recorded Covid-19 deaths and the worst ratio of deaths per 1,000 people in England, 0.4. But London also has the lowest high risk health condition mortality rate per 1,000 people, the lowest rate of adult obesity episodes per 1,000 people and the lowest proportion of over 65 years old households. These have been suggested as indicators of vulnerability to the virus, so from what we know, these factors should make it less likely that people living in London will die from the virus if they catch it, compared to other regions if the infection rate reaches the same level in those places as London has experienced.

No clear signs of how demography is relating to mortality in London

We know that age is a key factor in Covid-19 mortality but within London the areas with the highest numbers of deaths—(descending) Ealing, Brent and Harrow—all appear in the top four adult obesity episodes per 1,000 people in the capital. Many of these boroughs are also in the top half of the London table for high risk health condition mortality per 1,000 people but none are in the top five (the top five includes places like Havering and Bexley, which also have a higher proportion of over 65 years old households).

What we can also see, is that several of the top five London boroughs for deaths have indicators which show that they are quite deprived but others, such as Harrow, appear to be among the least deprived in the capital. Of these areas, all of them except Barnet, have fewer than the national average of local charities per 1,000 people. This may make it very difficult for targeted support to get to where it is needed in London.

Some key areas of demographic vulnerability to watch

From our data, we cannot tie the current level of Covid-19 deaths too clearly to any one demographic risk factor, but we can see that the demographic risk factors are unevenly spread across England. There is also increasing evidence that BAME communities are suffering worse Covid-19 related health outcomes than other groups in England. We have not included any data that could help us, or you, analyse this in England. Our ambition is to do this in the next data release, ideally in some detail, should we secure support.

High risk health condition mortality rate

The North East has the worst rate of high risk health condition mortality per 1,000 people, at 4.07 people, followed closely by the North West at 4.05 and the South West at 3.91.

It appears that places rank highly on this measure if they also has a high proportion of over 65 years old households. However, this is not the case in Blackpool, which has the fourth highest high risk condition mortality rate per 1,000 people in England, despite having an average proportion of over 65 years old households. Blackpool also has the joint least number of local charities in England.

Obesity

30 out of 40 local authorities in the East Midlands are above the national average rate of adult obesity and some local authorities in the region have extremely high rates. The national average is 14.6 per 1,000 people. In North West Leicestershire, the rate is 94.9 per 1,000 people. In North Kesteven 80.3 per 1,000 people. In the Derbyshire Dales, 74.5 per 1,000 people.

Age and isolation

The places which have the highest proportion of households that are someone over 65 years old living alone tend to be concentrated in the South and the East. The top five are Rother (20% of households), Tendring (19%), Arun, East Devon and North Norfolk (all 18%). These places also have a large high risk health condition mortality rate, as we might expect.

Across all the regions of England, households which are a single person over 65 years old make up from 10–13% of all households, and if you exclude London, 12-13%. This apparent consistency hides the large variation that exists within the regions. For example, in the East of England: in West Suffolk only 7% of households are a single person over 65 years old.

Tendring and Arun have a slightly below national average number of charities per 1,000 people (1.8) but East Devon and Rother have a number well above the average, with North Norfolk having 4.3 charities per 1,000 people, one of the highest rates in the country. Hopefully, this concentration will help support the highly specific needs that come with the higher proportion of older households in the area.

Deprivation

We have ranked areas by the proportion of their LSOAs which are in the top 10% most deprived nationally, as one indicator of their economic deprivation. Of the top ten, which includes major urban centres like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Middlesbrough, only three have a rate of Covid-19 deaths above the national average. They are Middlesbrough, Liverpool (both 0.39 deaths per 1,000 people) and Birmingham (0.37 deaths per 1,000 people). In other places, such as Kingston upon Hull, the rate is far below the national average of 0.22, sitting at 0.07 deaths per 1,000 people.

The relative deprivation of some of these places potentially means, in some cases, that a lack of integration with the national economy has so far kept the virus away. What is likely is that even if the health crisis does not deepen in these areas, they will suffer from the on-coming economic crisis.

Targeted support will be needed, and local social infrastructure will need to be built as all of these areas are at the lower end of the scale for local charities per 1,000 people in the country. Both Blackpool and Knowsley are in the top 10 for LSOAs which are in the top 10% most deprived nationally. Plus they are in the bottom 10 for the number of local charities per 1,000 people.

You can use our fully interactive dashboard by clicking here.