FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3287
You asked
Please supply the following information:
1) Weekly "all cause" death totals by date of occurrence, broken down in the age bands as per the Covid-19 vaccine surveillance report.
2) The associated vaccination status totals, based on the actual date of vaccination (needle in the arm), again as designated in the Covid-19 vaccine surveillance report.
3) The total number of the population vaccinated (based on date of needle in the arm) and unvaccinated for each week, again broken down in the age bands as per the Covid-19 vaccine surveillance report.
4) Information you hold regarding the system, process and methodology that relates to the conversion of the date an actual injection took place into a person's vaccination status (as seen in the various reports which include this information).
5) Documented evidence that the date a vaccination was received in the arm of an individual effectively corresponds to the ONS definition of a vaccinated person, as per definition 1 above.
6) Is there an international standard regarding the definition of the term vaccinated and the associated vaccination status?
We said
Thank you for your request.
Question 1
We publish weekly all cause death totals by date of registration, broken down into 5-year age bands in our provisional weekly deaths publications.
Should you wish to request any further weekly analysis of COVID-19 deaths by age, 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.
Questions 2 and 3
Whilst we hold information on deaths and receive separate 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 and "Vaccination rates" publications, both of which are based on the Public Health Data Asset, rather than the full population.
Therefore, in order to fulfil this request, we would need use a high level of statistical skill and judgement to create information involving complex data linkage and analysis of the mortality data and vaccinations data from the NIMS to the 2011 Census and GP register. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. Therefore, we do not hold this information.
As the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) publish the referenced weekly surveillance report, looking at the impact on hospitalisations, infection, vaccine effectiveness and COVID-19 mortality, they may be able to assist further with your query. They can be contacted on InformationRights@UKHSA.gov.uk.
Question 4
The vaccinations data we use is provided by the National Immunisation Management Service (NIMS) published by NHS England. The date of vaccination is the date that the vaccine was administered to the person.
Question 5
As stated in our "Deaths by vaccination status" releases, someone is considered vaccinated with one or two doses from the day that they receive the first or second dose respectively. We also break down the doses into "received the first/second vaccination less than 21 days ago" and "received the first/second vaccination at least 21 days ago", where numbers allow.
Question 6
Different breakdowns of vaccination status may be used by different organisations.