FOI Reference: FOI/2021/3454
You asked
1) How many have died within 28 days of being jabbed, since December 2020 and not what was put down without medical proof as a cause of death (which will never be the jab).
The current information provided in https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/monthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales
2) How many have died 'from' and only 'from' CV19 or Sars COV II, in 2020 and in 2021 in England Wales? Not 'with' (an underlying test or guess), but only 'from', which could be proven by with medical proof of death?
We said
Thank you for your request.
Doctors are required by law to certify the cause of death 'to the best of their knowledge and belief'. That means they use their medical expertise to decide the cause based on symptoms, physical examination, hospital records, laboratory tests, and all the other information available. If death is certified by a coroner, the Coroner's Court follows legal rules of evidence when deciding the causes of death.
There are long-standing guidelines and processes which must be followed, and some changes have been made to these to allow for the circumstances of the pandemic – but there is no change to the legal and professional obligation to record the cause of death accurately.
You can read the government guidelines for doctors on completing a medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD).
For the vaccine to be mentioned on the death certificate, the medical professional certifying the death must have believed, to the best of their knowledge, that the vaccine was part of the events that led to the death. This information will take longer to come through because deaths that go to a coroner for investigation tend to take longer to be registered. Deaths can take several months to be registered if they are investigated by a coroner.
You can find the number of deaths attributed to adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination in table 12 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset. There are currently 15 deaths registered in England and Wales with the aligning ICD codes (cause) for this, 10 of these deaths have ICD10 U12.9 as the underlying cause. The most recent update of this publication includes data from March 2020 to December 2021.
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.
Further information can be found in our blog, accessible via the following link: How many people have died as a result of a COVID-19 vaccine?
Our mortality data is derived from information collected from the death certificate at the point of death registration. For deaths involving COVID-19, whether there was a positive test result is only one piece of information to be taken into account, alongside the patient's symptoms and other evidence. COVID-19 is only mentioned on the death certificate if the doctor or coroner believes it was part of the reason the person died. A positive test result does not make a death 'count' as involving COVID-19 if COVID-19 did not actually contribute to the death, for example if the person died in an accident.
When we say that a death 'involved' COVID-19, we mean that COVID-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, possibly along with other health conditions, not necessarily as the underlying cause of death. When we say that a death was 'due to' COVID-19, we mean that COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death, because it was either the only health condition mentioned on the death certificate, or it was the one that started the train of events leading to death.
For 2020 deaths we hold the following analysis: Deaths due to COVID-19, registered in England and Wales: 2020. Deaths due to and involving COVID-19 in England and Wales can be found in table 1 of the corresponding data set.
For 2021 and 2022 data, we report this weekly in our Deaths Registered Weekly in England and Wales publication.
For further information please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk