FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3238
You asked
Please can you provide me by email with the following additional information in relation to the ONS 'Deaths involving covid-19 by vaccination status, England; deaths occurring between 2nd January and 24th September 2021' publication of 1st November 2021
In relation to the dataset in table 3 and table 4 that accompanied that release
1. By week from 8th January to 24th September for the age group 50-59 please can you supply split by vaccination status (unvaccinated, within 21 days of first dose, 21 days or more after first dose, second dose)
a) the number of weekly deaths from all causes (split by vaccination status)
b) the number of weekly covid deaths (split by vaccination status)
c) the weekly population this relates to (split by vaccination status)
2. Please can you supply the same data as in 1. but a) in relation to the 40-49 age group, b) in relation to the 30-39 age group and c) in relation to the 20-29 age group
If it is not possible to provide all the information in 2. because of small numbers (or other reasons) please provide the information in 1. in relation to the 50-59 age group and those age groups in 2. for which it is possible
If it is not possible to provide the information for the 50-59 age group in 1. please provide it for the age 55-59 age group instead
If it is not possible to provide the information in 1. or 2. for each vaccination status please provide the information for the unvaccinated status and a total across all vaccination statuses.
If it is not possible to provide all the information in 1 above please provide the information in 1 a) and 1 c) split by vaccination status (either all statuses or non-vaccinated and total across all statuses)
Because the information requested should be readily available and is fundamental to the production of the age 10-59 category data provided in that report, I would hope it should be possible to easily provide some of this information to enable a non age confounded understanding of that age group
Thank you for providing a very interesting dataset in that report.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We will be publishing further age breakdowns of the deaths by vaccination status data in our upcoming update to this release. However, this will not be broken down by week due to disclosure concerns and will not be for the full population as we use the population in the Public Health Data Asset to calculate more accurate rates (more information on this can be found in our November publication).
We are unable to provide any further disaggregation of this data as it would be considered personal information. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individual businesses or persons can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
Weekly deaths for age groups 50-59/55-59, 40-49, 30-39 and 20-29, for deaths involving COVID-19, by vaccination status (either all statuses or total across all statuses)
Whilst we hold information on deaths and receive data on vaccinations from the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS), we do not hold any analysis on this data other than that published in our "Deaths by vaccination status" releases. In order to fulfil this request, we would need use a high level of statistical skill and judgement including complex data linkage and analysis of the mortality data and vaccinations data from the NIMS in order to create a bespoke analysis or table. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.
UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) publish data that could help answer your enquiry. They publish a weekly surveillance report which looks at the impact on hospitalisations, infection, vaccine effectiveness and mortality. They can be contacted on InformationRights@UKHSA.gov.uk
The UKHSA weekly surveillance report includes numbers of COVID-19 deaths (defined as a death within 28 or 60 days of a positive COVID-19 test) for 4 week periods, by vaccination status, by age group including the age groups 50-59, 40-49, 30-39 and 18-29. Note, vaccination status is defined relative to the infection date in the UKHSA data, rather than the date of death as for the ONS releases on deaths by vaccination status.
Population for age groups 50-59/55-59, 40-49, 30-39 and 20-29 by vaccination status (either all statuses or total across all statuses)
We do not hold information on the total populations by vaccination status.
For the deaths by vaccination status release, we produce rates for a sample of the population, who are enumerated in the 2011 Census and link to the GP register, to result in a person level dataset with NHS numbers to link to vaccination and mortality data. This means we can more accurately determine the mortality rates by vaccination status, particularly for the unvaccinated population, which is overestimated in the NIMS dataset. The sample covers approx. 79% of the population aged 10+. More information can be found in our publication.
UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) may be able to help with information on the populations by vaccination status in NIMS, as this is the population used for the rates published in the weekly surveillance report which looks at the impact on hospitalisations, infection, vaccine effectiveness and mortality. They can be contacted on InformationRights@UKHSA.gov.uk.