FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2811
You asked
Please provide the total confirmed deaths from COVID-19 with no other health conditions in UK aged 25 and under.
Also the confirmed suicide deaths from the time COVID-19 deaths occurred.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
COVID-19 deaths with no other health conditions in the UK:
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. Should you wish to obtain this data from NRS and NISRA, they can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
However, you may find the following information for England and Wales helpful:
We hold the following analysis showing deaths from COVID-19 with no pre-existing conditions by broad age-bands in England and Wales: Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics. Please navigate to Table 2 of this publication to view this information for 2020 and quarter 1 and quarter 2 of 2021.
Unfortunately, we do not hold analysis showing COVID-19 deaths with no pre-existing conditions in England and Wales for under 25s specifically.
Suicides:
Most suicides require an inquest, where a coroner investigates the death. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date of death and the date of death registration, referred to as a registration delay. Registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be 5 to 6 months on average.
Therefore, our most up-to-date analysis for suicide data are our quarterly provisional figures, accessible via the following link: Quarterly suicide death registrations in England: 2001 to 2020 registrations and Quarter 1 to Quarter 4 2020 (provisional). This provides suicides that have been registered from January to December 2020. The following dataset accompanying this bulletin provides this information broken down by age, sex, and region.
Suicides in England and Wales 2020 will be published in September/October 2021.
As such, finalised 2020 suicides data 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.