Excess deaths is the difference between deaths this year on the average number over the past five years.

The latest figures also underlined the differences across the UK during this second wave, with the north west of England recording over a third more deaths than usual, while London has seen no difference at all.

Our health editor, Hugh Pym, has been studying the figures.

A community hospital facing up to co vid the Coronavirus ward at Clacton Hospital in Essex is getting busier, more so than in the first wave.

Hello way.

Keep doing your swaps.

Some patients air here for two weeks, or Mawr waiting till they test negative, but some have not survived.

The staff at the moment are quite emotional.

We've had quite a few deaths on bond.

It's quite hard managing staff that are emotional.

They need a emotional support, Theo.

Overall covert impact is shown in total excess deaths from all causes.

That's the number above what's expected at this time of year, with the latest figures for the first week in November.

This line shows the average number of UK weekly deaths over the last five years on this one shows what's happened so far this year, and you can see there was a sharp spike at the peak of the first wave in April.

The red area shows co vid deaths the blue other excess deaths, some of which may be linked in directly to the virus because people didn't seek or didn't get hospital treatment.

Then it falls back towards the average before picking up again.

In recent weeks, though, it's still well short of that first peak.

There's a lag between cases being diagnosed and then some patients getting seriously ill and not surviving.

We can expect deaths to carry on going up for several more weeks because we already know that cases have been going up for several weeks and the people whose deaths were registered in the latest data will probably, of course, Kobe.

Sometime in in October, there were big variations in excess deaths, the highest in the northwest of England.

Wales and Northern Ireland were all around a third above their five year averages.

In the latest week, Scotland's were 12% above average.

The lowest included the east of England, with 6% on London, with no deaths above the average, Experts say.

In some parts of the country, infection rates didn't come down as rapidly as others.

When locked down restrictions were eased in the summer.

In areas like the Northwest, it still remained much, much higher than areas like London in the Southeast.

So what that meant was, when we came into autumn and schools went back, infection started to increase from a much higher level.

And so we're seeing those higher levels in these areas be through much higher mortality in excess death rates.

Ministers and officials say case numbers should start falling soon on.

That should pave the way for a return in December 2 tiered restrictions in England.

But what that means for Christmas is anyone's guess.