The Partygate scandal has been thrust back into the spotlight, after Boris Johnson was referred to the police over fresh allegations that he broke lockdown rules at Checkers gatherings during the Covid pandemic.
Earlier, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, were among 83 people fined by the Metropolitan police for gatherings held while Covid restrictions were in place.
The scandal eventually led to Johnson’s resignation as prime minister, despite his earlier claim that “all the guidance was fully followed by No 10”.
With more than 220,000 Covid deaths so far, the Guardian has plotted UK deaths against dates where staff parties are said to have taken place, as well as other alleged breaches of lockdown rules and Johnson commented on the gatherings.
Data and method notes
Daily deaths in the UK as recorded by the Office for National Statistics – which includes all deaths where Covid is mentioned on the death certificate until 29 April 2022, as of the latest publication – and rose to 195,915 people. This time lag means that the graphic remains static for the last two weeks of the interactive without showing the actual situation of those days.
This differs from the government’s main metric from the Covid-19 data dashboard, which only includes deaths that occurred within 28 days of a positive Covid test.
The level of restrictions from the University of Oxford’s coronavirus response tracker. A strict index score of more than 75 is classified as “very high” level of restrictions, more than 50 “high”, more than 25 “medium” and then anything below is classified as “very low” “.
