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Lucinda Hiam at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Danny Dorling at the University of Oxford say weekly mortality figures show 10,375 additional deaths (a rise of 12.4%) in England and Wales in the first seven weeks of 2018 compared with the previous five years.
This rise cannot be explained by ageing of the population, a flu epidemic, or cold weather - and no official explanation has been forthcoming as to why death rates have continued to be so high relative to previous trends, they write.