Nearly 1,200 more people than normal died every week across the UK on average in 2021, striking new figures show.
Analysis by The Mirror reveals that across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the number of recorded deaths was 10 per cent higher than the five-year average.
Provisional data from UK statistics agencies shows 667,030 people died across the four countries in 2021 - 62,352 more than normal in the past five years.
Experts say this figure - known as excess deaths - highlights the devastating impact the pandemic has had.
According to latest Department of Health data, 71,262 people died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus in 2021, with the official death toll standing at 149,226 on New Year's Eve.
The picture is equally bleak since the start of the pandemic, with nearly 150,000 excess deaths recorded.
Between the start of the Covid crisis and the end of 2021, the number of people who died from all causes was more than 144,000 higher than the five year average.
Last year the number of people dying from flu dropped significantly, but deadly Covid waves meant tens of thousands more deaths were registered than average, experts said.
At the height of the deadly wave in January last year, nearly 6,000 extra deaths were recorded in a week.
These include deaths from other causes, which may have been prevented if health services were not overstretched dealing with the pandemic.
Registered deaths did level off at times during the year, dropping below normal levels some weeks in the spring and summer.
But it rose again at the end of 2021, with England and Wales recording around 1,300 more deaths than average a week in December.
Between the start of 2020 and December 31 last year, England and Wales recorded 129,809 excess deaths.
Dr Jason Oke, statistician at the University of Oxford's medical sciences division, told The Mirror: "As Covid is a new disease we would expect most of these to be in on top of what is normally expected (excess).
"The reason why the total excess number is lower than the number of Covid deaths is that there have been fewer deaths registered as arising from other causes than expected and to some extent Covid has replaced flu as a cause of death in the elderly.
"This was particularly evident at the beginning of 2021."
Data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that 585,899 people died in England and Wales from all causes in 2021.
Of these, Covid-19 was mentioned on 76,094 death certificates.
This compares to an average of 531,129 overall deaths in the previous five years - a difference of 54,770.
There was a similar story in Scotland, where a total of 63,575 deaths were recorded between the start of the year and December 27.
This is 5,948 more higher than the average in the five years before the pandemic.
In 2020 there were 6,992 excess deaths - meaning 12,940 more people have died than normal in the past two years in Scotland.
In Northern Ireland authorities recorded 17,556 deaths from all causes.
This is 1,634 higher than the previous five years, while the previous year there were 1,856 excess deaths.
"It's not surprising, we're in a pandemic," said Prof John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, a member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee.
"If you look at them (excess deaths), the vast majority are most certainly Covid."
But he said that pressures on healthcare services would be a factor in a number of non-Covid deaths.
Prof Edmunds said that providing an accurate Covid death toll is tricky, as the official government count includes all people who die within 28 days of testing positive.
The number of mentions on death certificates are a better indication of the overall death toll, he said, while the excess death figure allow comparison with previous years.
"The number of people who have died in 2020 and the last year are really, really very large compared to the number of deaths in previous years," he said.
"This pandemic has been a very unusual event, there's been a large number of deaths compared to what you'd normally expect."
Prof Duncan Robertson, Policy & Strategy Analytics academic at Loughborough University, told The Mirror: “Excess deaths need to be considered over the course of the whole epidemic.
"These can be direct Covid deaths where lives were cut short directly due to the effects of Covid, or indirect deaths, potentially because people were unable to get health care they otherwise would have received.
“We also have to consider that the past two years have had very low rates of flu, and that will have reduced excess deaths – if there had been a large flu epidemic coinciding with Covid, this would have caused excess deaths to have been even higher.
“As well as mortality, Covid can have significant effects on people’s quality of life, for example the health effects from Long Covid."
