Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

After digging into it a bit and following several links, I ended up here and here. It looks like key bits are:

Data on COVID-19 deaths in England are produced by Public Health England (PHE). These data are taken from 3 different sources:

• NHS England: deaths are reported by NHS Trusts using the COVID-19 Patient Notification System (CPNS) (this includes only deaths in hospitals)

• PHE Health Protection Teams: the local teams report deaths notified to them (mainly deaths not in hospitals)

• Linking SGSS to the NHS Demographic Batch Service: when a patient dies, the NHS central register of patients is notified (this is not limited to deaths in hospitals). The list of all lab-confirmed cases (SGSS: see 'England cases' section on this page) is checked against the NHS central register each day, to check if any of the patients have died.

And:

In order to improve the timely availability of data on deaths in care homes caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have agreed to publish provisional counts of deaths in care homes, based on statutory notifications by care home providers to CQC.

The figures will be published as part of the ONS’s weekly deaths release, and will include:

• total count of deaths in England per day, where the death was in a care home and was notified by the care home operator as involving COVID-19

• count of deaths in care homes by local authority in England per week, divided into all deaths and deaths notified as involving COVID-19

So... it looks like they are including care home deaths now, at least as far as they're known, and possibly with a delay as they say it's 'part of the ONS’s weekly deaths release'. Following the link there gives me this, which has the 'week ending 24 April 2020' as the last entry.