The coronavirus daily death toll is 'inflated' with fewer than 40 a day in reality, statisticians have said.
The Department of Health today said the death toll has risen by 66 in the past 24 hours - the lowest Thursday death toll since lockdown began in March but the number newly confirmed cases reported today is the exact same as this time last week.
However, Oxford University experts have said the figures are too high and give a "confusing" picture of coronavirus in the UK.
They said some deaths are effectively added on to random days - and could include fatalities that happened weeks or even months ago.
Follow all coronavirus updates on our live blog here
Dr Jason Oke and Professor Carl Heneghan claimed deaths are falling, if at a slower rate than they were earlier in the crisis.
They called on the government to make it clearer when people actually died in order to prevent one day spikes, such as Tuesday's 138 deaths, appearing like a new outbreak.
Writing in a blog Dr Oke and Professor Heneghan said: "What has become apparent in recent weeks is the growing disparity between the numbers released by ONS [Office for National Statistics] and those reported by Public Health England which are widely disseminated in the media."
The blog entry continued to say that Public Heath England's figures "vary substantially from day to day" adding: "This variation is most likely due to the appearance of "historic" deaths that have occurred weeks before, but for some reason unknown to us, get reported in batches on particular days.
Most Read
"To counter this variation, a moving average smooths the trend, but even this is at odds with the ONS data...
"We can surmise that the total number of deaths in all settings is approximately 40 per day, much closer to the ONS numbers."
Publib Health England only counts deaths in people who tested positive for Covid-19, which means it is thought to have missed out thousands of people at the start of the epidemic.
The Office of National Statistics however counts anyone who has the disease mentioned on their death certificate, whether they were tested or not.
The Oxford academics added: "The PHE figures average has been consistently higher than ONS for some time...
"Because of the inaccuracies in PHE data we recommend using ONS data and the NHS England data to understand the trends in deaths over time.
"To reduce confusion we require all deaths reported by PHE to include when they occurred as opposed to the day of reporting."