LONDON - In the first 49 days of this year, an extra person died every seven minutes in Britain compared with five years before, the biggest difference since the Second World War, news reports here said on Thursday.

Loneliness, overstretched hospitals and the crumbling elderly care system could all be contributing to a sharply increase in deaths, according to the reports.

The increase can be clearly shown as about 10,375 more people than would be expected died in the first seven weeks of this year, or a rise of 12.4 percent.

This rise was not due to the ageing of the population, and British experts have called on the government to explain why there were more than 10,000 "additional deaths" in England and Wales in the first few weeks of 2018.

An editorial published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) showed that during the first seven weeks of the year, there were 93,990 deaths in total.

But in the same period over the previous five years an average of 83,615 people died.

The latest death rise suggests that British life expectancy is about to start falling, academics say. They have called for an urgent investigation after the latest in a string of figures that show older people are dying earlier than expected.

Infant mortality has also risen in the world's first industrialized country, with dozens more babies dying in 2016 than the previous year, according to the reports.

The reported deaths are the result of sustained underfunding and should be taken more seriously by the government, the reports said.

After decades of rising life expectancy, progress has stalled in recent years in Britain, while it continues in many other countries.

"Because so many older people are dying sooner than expected, life expectancy in Britain has stopped increasing," the Times newspaper said. "If this year's trend continues, British lives will start to become shorter, something unexpected in modern times."

"The figures make the case for an -investigation stronger and more urgent," the Daily Mirror newspaper reported.

Caroline Abrahams, who is from Age UK, said, "It is extremely worrying that more older people are dying during what was a relatively mild winter. Older people have felt the brunt of long-standing cuts to social care and stagnant funding for the NHS (Britian's National Health Service)."

To cope with anticipated pressures, the NHS was advised to cancel all non-urgent care in January, amounting to tens of thousands of planned operations, to free up capacity, the Independent newspaper said.

While British Prime Minister Theresa May said the NHS was better prepared for the winter than ever before, doctors warned that patients were "dying prematurely in corridors."

Danny Dorling, an Oxford professor who analyzed the figures, said, "The key thing to remember is we had an NHS in crisis like never before. Austerity -policies are the most likely cause of the slowing of life expectancy rises."

"People have become a bit immune to this. Five years ago, this would have got a lot more attention, this huge number of people dying, this huge number of people dying" Dorling said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the British Department of Health and Social Care said, "We are absolutely committed to helping people live long and healthy lives, which is why the NHS was given top priority in the autumn budget. We will consider this and other new research."

The first weeks of this year witnessed that icy grip of the so-called Beast from the East continued to tighten on the British Isles, with more snow, wind and punishingly cold temperatures on the way.

However, the winter of 2017-18 is actually relatively mild compared to some that have come before. Which winter holds the distinction of "coldest on record" depends on the data and criteria used.