You asked
Please provide:
How many deaths were recorded in 2020 specifically with 'Covid-19' as primary cause of death compared to 'with Covid-19' where Covid-19 was not the actual cause of deaths?
How does this compare to the deaths with/of Covid-19 after the rollout of vaccination programme on/around 10th December 2020?
How many deaths in care homes for the elderly were recorded in 2020 from Covid-19, also with Covid-19 and how does this compare to deaths after vaccinations were introduced into care homes?
All figures for England
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The number of deaths 'due to' and 'involving' COVID-19 in England and Wales are available in the following publication: Provisional weekly deaths. Data are available for each week in 2020 and for the first two months of 2021 in the excel chart data download file underneath Figure 2.
We use the term "due to COVID-19" when referring only to deaths where that illness was recorded as the underlying cause of death. We use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had that illness mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, either as underlying cause or contributory factor.
Our monthly mortality analysis includes information on COVID-19 deaths by main pre-existing condition and where COVID-19 was the sole condition mentioned.
Provisional numbers of care home resident deaths involving COVID-19 for England and Wales, 2020 and 2021, can be found in our latest provisional weekly deaths publication.
Table 1 of the following publication, Monthly mortality analysis, provides the total number of deaths from all causes per month in England from January 2001 to January 2021.
At present, we are unable to provide the number of people who have died from COVD-19 after having had a COVID-19 vaccine. We are currently developing our analytical plans with an intention to publish vaccination statistics soon. Once we have finalised these plans a publication date will be announced on our Release Calendar.
As such, this information 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.