FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3524
You asked
Please supply the following information:
1) Number of deaths registered and rate of deaths due to and involving COVID-19 by age and sex, England and Wales by month 2021.
2) Number of deaths registered and rate of deaths due to and involving COVID-19 by age and sex, England and Wales, by month 2022.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry regarding COVID-19 deaths by age and sex.
We hold the following analysis Single year of age and average age of death of people whose death was due to or involved COVID-19 - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) which will provide deaths due to and involving COVID-19 by single year of age and if the death is due to or involving COVID-19 from March 2020 to December 2021.
In our Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales publication, we publish provisional data of deaths registered involving COVID-19 by sex and 5 year age group for 2020, 2021 and 2022. This publication is updated every Tuesday.
In our Monthly Mortality analysis, we publish deaths due to COVID-19 and deaths involving COVID-19 by sex. Data is available from March 2020 to December 2021. January 2022 data will be published in February 2022.
As such, the information you have requested for 2022 is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
Should you wish to request any further analysis outside of the information available above, this would need to be created as bespoke analysis. Therefore, we would advise consulting with the Health Data customer service desk, who will be able to discuss your request further. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.