FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3572
You asked
Please supply deaths from COVID-19 with no other underlying causes split into the under 65 group and into under 18 and then till every ten years.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry regarding COVID-19 deaths by specific age group for England and Wales.
The medical certificate of cause of death has two parts, Part 1 contains the sequence of health conditions or events leading directly to death, while Part 2 can contain other health conditions that contributed to the death but were not part of the direct sequence. Deaths due to COVID-19 usually have COVID-19 mentioned in Part 1 and may have consequences of COVID-19, such as pneumonia, mentioned in lines above. The presence of conditions listed as consequences of COVID-19 are not underlying conditions and are not counted in our method to describe pre-existing conditions mentioned in deaths due to COVID-19.
We define pre-existing conditions as those mentioned in Part 2 of the medical certificate of cause of death. If COVID-19 is mentioned in Part 1 on lines above other conditions also mentioned in Part 1, the last condition mentioned in Part 1 is also considered a pre-existing condition. We don't know exactly how many people who died from COVID-19 had no pre-existing health conditions, only how many did not have a pre-existing condition mentioned on the death certificate. A contributor to the cause of death is expected to have increased the likelihood of death, but this does not mean that the death would have been avoided in its absence.
We would also recommend reading our recent blog on this subject: To say only 17,000 people have died from COVID-19 is highly misleading | National Statistical (ons.gov.uk).
We hold the following analysis Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales using broad age bands which will contain deaths with no pre-existing conditions, but this will not include your requested age band.
The same publication also shows the leading pre-existing conditions involved in COVID-19 deaths, but we have not conducted analysis of your requested age group.
Further age breakdowns would need to be created as bespoke analysis. 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 will be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.