Nearly 10,000 more people than usual have died in the past four months from non-Covid reasons. Fears are growing that NHS delays at the height of the pandemic left large numbers of people with previously treatable conditions suffering illnesses that have now become fatal. England and Wales registered 20,823 more deaths than the five-year average in the past 18 weeks. The director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine is calling for an urgent investigation. The excess deaths are happening in conditions like ischemic heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver and diabetes, all potentially reversible. There’s a need to find out if these deaths were fallout from the lack of preventable care during the pandemic, and what happens downstream of that.