You asked
Please provide the full number of all deaths to date and also the total number of all deaths where COVID-19 was the only cause of death recorded on death certificates.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The mortality data published by ONS are derived from the formal process of death registration. For Scotland and Northern Ireland statistics please contact National Records Scotland and NISRA respectively.
Deaths from COVID-19
Deaths from COVID-19 may include cases where the doctor completing the death certificate diagnosed possible cases of COVID-19, for example, where this was based on relevant symptoms but no test for the virus was conducted. Deaths with a positive test are coded using the ICD10 code U0.71 and those with suspected COVID-19 but no test has been conducted are coded with ICD10 U0.72.
Figure 2 of our Deaths registered weekly bulletin shows the number of deaths due to COVID-19 and the number of deaths involving COVID-19 with "due to" referring only to deaths where COVID-19 was recorded as the underlying cause of death and "involving" referring to deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.
Please see the "download data" option at the bottom of Figure 2.
Here are the latest summed totals for COVID-19 up to week ending 19 February 2021:
Deaths involving COVID-19 (underlying or secondary cause): 128,077
Deaths due to COVID-19 (underlying cause): 115,574
Deaths from COVID-19 only
We have also been producing Pre-existing conditions of people whose death was recorded with an underlying cause of COVID-19, deaths registered in 2020, this dataset can be found in section 7 of the Monthly mortality analysis bulletin. This dataset provides a greater insight into the leading pre-existing cause of death groups, for deaths occurring in England and Wales in 2020 that were due to COVID-19. This will be updated quarterly. COVID-19 deaths involving pre-existing conditions is split by broad age groups between 1 to 64 years and 65 years and over.
Please see "table 1a, row 28" for deaths where COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause, but had no other pre-existing conditions recorded on the death certificate.
There was a total of 9400 deaths in 2020 that were due to COVID-19 and were recorded without any pre-existing conditions.
If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.