COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination mortality statistics in people under 18 years

FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4276

You asked

Could you provide me with the mortality numbers for people under the age of 18 for the following?

• COVID Vaccination

• COVID-19

Preferably for the whole period of the COVID outbreak.

We said

​Thank you for your enquiry.

Deaths due to and involving COVID-19

We hold the following analysis for 2020 and 2021 Deaths due to COVID-19, registered in England and Wales .  We use the term "due to COVID-19" when referring only to deaths with an underlying cause of death as COVID-19 and we use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.

We publish in 5-year age bands so the data available shows 0-19 years old.

Notes:

1. Figures are for deaths registered rather than deaths occurred.
2. Figures are based on area of usual residence. Figures for England and Wales (combined) include deaths of non-residents. However, all other geographical breakdowns exclude deaths of non-residents and are based on the most up-to-date information available at the time of publication.
3. We use the term "due to COVID-19" when referring only to deaths with an underlying cause of death as COVID-19 and we use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not. The International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Edition (ICD-10) definition has been used, please see the definitions tab for more information. Information on cause of death coding is available in the User Guide to Mortality Statistics: User guide to mortality statistics - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).

2022 data is still provisional and is reported weekly in the Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional. As of 1 July 2022, there have been 20,659 deaths registered involving COVID-19 in England and Wales.

Deaths due to COVID-19 vaccination

We report deaths due to the COVID-19 vaccination in our Monthly Mortality analysis. We have pasted the following table from this analysis:

Notes

1. Figures are for deaths registered rather than deaths occurring in each period.
2. Figures for 2021 and 2022 are based on provisional mortality data and therefore may not match those published elsewhere or in other tables. Data for 2020 was revised in the August 2021 edition; please see the information tab for further detail on revisions to this analysis
3. Figures exclude non-residents.
4. The data within this table are refreshed each month and therefore there may be small discrepancies with other tables that do not have earlier months refreshed.

Data for June will be published on 25 July 2022.

Deaths by vaccination status after receipt of the COVID-19 vaccination

We hold the following analysis Deaths by vaccination status, England - Office for National Statistics. The data are for England only, as vaccinations data for Wales is not yet available to be linked to the mortality dataset and the PHDA covers England only.

Notes:

1. Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures based on deaths that occurred between 1 January 2021 and 31 May 2022 and were registered by 8 June 2022. These figures represent death occurrences, there can be a delay between the date a death occurred and the date a death was registered. More information can be found in our Impact of registration delays release.
2. ASMRs are calculated using the Public Health Data Asset, a linked dataset of people resident in England, who could be linked to the 2011 Census and GP Patient Register. This dataset covers approximately 79% of the population in England aged 10 years and over.
3. Age is defined on the first day of the month.
4. Deaths were defined using the International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD-10). Deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) are defined as those with an underlying cause, or any mention of, ICD-10 codes U07.1 (COVID-19 virus identified) or U07.2 (COVID-19, virus not identified). Please note, this differs from the definition used in the majority of mortality outputs.
5. Third dose and booster vaccinations are defined as a third or booster dose received after 16 September 2021, the date from which booster doses were first administered. Due to our definition of a third dose or booster only including data from 16th September, there are 0 Person-years and consequently 0 counts of death before September for 'Within 21 days of third dose or booster' and  '21 days or more after third dose or booster', and within September for '21 days or more after third dose or booster'. Spring boosters have not yet been distinguished in this analysis.
6. There were some people who were vaccinated but not included in the NIMS data as they died soon after vaccination. Of these, 1,436 linked to our Public health Data Asset dataset. We included the latest vaccination records for these people in our dataset. This data is provisional and extends up to the 25 May 2022. This will be updated in future release.

If this does not meet your needs, we may be able to create a custom data set. Special extracts and tabulations are available to order from the HALE Customer Services team, which are subject to disclosure control, legal frameworks, resources and agreement to costs under the ONS Charging policy.

For further information please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.