FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3188
You asked
1. Please supply the numbers of COVID-19 related deaths for the below age groups that were recorded in September 2021, October 2021 and to the date this FOI is actioned in November 2021. Given the small number of deaths involved in these cohorts, could you also please give the date each death was reported on by ONS? And could you also break these numbers down by region?
- 0-4
- 10-14
- 15-19
2. Please specifically supply how many children died of or from COVID-19 in the UK in the 24 hour period between 6pm on the 3rd November 2021 to 6pm on the 4th November 2021. And could you also break this number (if any) down by regions?
An example of what I am looking for request 1:
England
0-4 = 0
10-14 = 1 (12/9/21)
15-19 = 2 (1/10/21 & 4/10/21)
An example of what I am looking for request 2:
There were 3 deaths reported in the 24 hour period referred to:
0-4 = 1 Death (Scotland)
10-14 = 1 Death (Wales)
15-19 = 1 Death (England)
We said
Thank you for your request regarding COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales by specific age group and date.
We hold the following analysis for Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional. This publication is updated every Tuesday and the latest data available is 19 November 2021.
From 3 September to 19 November, here are the summed weekly totals for your requested age groups:
- 0-4: 8 registered deaths
- 10-14: 5 registered deaths
- 15-19: 10 registered deaths
ONS deaths are reported with an 11-day lag to allow time for the death registration by family, processing by General Registry office and processing by ONS.
However, we can supply deaths by date of occurrence for COVID-19, which is the date of death within your time-period.
- 0-4: 8 death occurrences
- 10-14: 5 death occurrences
- 15-19: 9 death occurrences
If you would like to obtain this information broken down by age specifically from 1 September 2021, we can provide this as a bespoke request. Weekly deaths by specific age group and specific date along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
However, due to the small numbers involved, we are unable to disclose the requested information by age, geographical location and specific cause. This is because this analysis would produce very low figures, which would constitute personal information. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it a criminal offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual. 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. This is also consistent with the disclosure control methodology used for deaths.
UK deaths within specified 24-hour period in November 2021
We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Therefore, we do not hold the requested data for the whole of the UK. You may wish to contact NRS and NISRA to see if they can help further at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
Whilst date of death is stated for the person on the certificate, time of death is not routinely recorded therefore we do not hold this information for deaths registered in England and Wales.