COVID-19 Medical interventions, Hospital admissions and adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccinations

​FOI Reference: FOI/2022/3400

You asked

Please can you confirm the following :

1) What medical interventions are available to treat Covid 19?

2) Since September 2020 to December 18th, 2021, how many hospitalisations have there been where covid was the presenting issue?

3) Of those admissions, how many had received a minimum of 1 jab?

4) Of those admitted to hospital with covid, how many died?

5) How many, of those who died, had not received any jabs at all?

6) Do current known adverse reactions to the jab(s) now formally include stroke, heart attacks, blindness, seizures, neurological issues and/or death?

We said

Thank you for your request.

Medical interventions:

ONS does not hold this information, NHS England or NHS Wales would be better placed to answer your enquiry.

NHS England can be contacted by telephone on 0300 311 22 33 or by email: england.contactus@nhs.net

NHS Wales can be contacted by telephone on 0300 0604400 or by email on customerhelp@gov.wales

COVID-19 Hospitalisations by vaccination status

We do not hold up-to-date information on hospitalisations. Our data on hospital episodes is obtained from the Hospital Episode Statistics published by NHS Digital with an approximately 3 month delay. Therefore, we use this data to determine pre-existing conditions and general health of individuals, but not to analyse recent hospitalisations due to COVID-19.

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 COVID-19 mortality. If you have any further questions regarding this data, they can be contacted on InformationRights@UKHSA.gov.uk

The UKHSA weekly surveillance report includes numbers of COVID-19 hospitalisations and numbers of COVID-19 deaths within 28 and 60 days of positive specimen or with COVID-19 reported on death certificate for 4-week periods, by vaccination status and age group, where vaccination status is defined on the date of infection. The report also includes mortality rates by vaccination status, where NIMS is used for the denominator.

COVID-19 deaths by vaccination status.

We hold the following analysis Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England which is an analysis of deaths involving COVID-19 and all cause deaths by vaccination status that occurred between 1 January and 31 October 2021 in England.

Notes:

1. Age-standardised mortality rates per 100,000 person-years, standardised to the 2013 European Standard Population using five-year age groups from those aged 10 years and over. "Person-years" take into account both the number of people and the amount of time spent in each vaccination status. For more information, see our methodology article.
2. Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures based on deaths that occurred between 1 January and 31 October 2021 and were registered by 10 November 2021. These figures represent death occurrences, there can be a delay between the date a death occurred and the date a death was registered. More information can be found in our impact of registration delays release.
3. ASMRs are calculated using the Public Health Data Asset, a linked dataset of people resident in England, who could be linked to the 2011 Census and GP Patient Register. This dataset covers approximately 79% of the population in England aged 10+.
4. Deaths were defined using the International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD-10). Deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) are defined as those with an underlying cause, or any mention of, ICD-10 codes U07.1 (COVID-19 virus identified) or U07.2 (COVID-19, virus not identified). Please note, this differs from the definition used in the majority of mortality outputs.
5. 95% confidence intervals are indicated by the shaded regions. Where the total number of deaths is less than 100, Dobson's method is used, otherwise the normal approximation is used. Non-overlapping confidence intervals denote a statistically significant difference in ASMR.
6. Age is defined on the first day of the month.
7. While differences in the ages of people in the vaccination status groups are accounted for, other differences, such as health, ethnicity or level of deprivation, may remain, which can affect the mortality rates.

The data is for England only, as vaccinations data for Wales is not yet available to be linked to the mortality dataset and the PHDA covers England only. Therefore, we consider data for Wales as information not held.

A further release containing November and December 2021 data is provisionally scheduled for February 2022, final date of publication will be announced on Release Calendar. As such, the information you have requested 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.

Adverse reactions to COVID-19 Vaccination

ONS do not hold data regarding adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination that do not result in death. The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority are better placed to answer your enquiry, as they are responsible for the Yellow Card Scheme. They can be contacted using this form

We do report deaths attributed to the COVID-19 vaccination monthly within our Monthly Mortality Analysis.  The latest data available is November 2021. December data will be released on 21 January 2022.

There are currently 13 deaths registered in England and Wales with the aligning ICD codes for this, 9 of these deaths have ICD10 U12.9 as the underlying cause. However, please note that these are deaths across all age groups since the rollout of the vaccination in December 2020 and there are no deaths registered under the age of 35.

For further information, please contact Health.data@ons.gov.uk