You asked
Please can you supply me with the statistics for adverse drug reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine in under 60 year olds to date?
I would also appreciate a list of deaths post vaccine in under 60 year olds and also what time frame post vaccine you are utilising?
I am assuming that, as with Covid , you are basing your figures on the basis that any death 28 days from having had the vaccine is a "vaccine related death". Is this correct?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
1. Please can you supply me with the statistics for adverse drug reactions to the COVID vaccine in under 60-year-olds to date?
We hold analysis showing the number of deaths caused by an adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccination (not restricted to 28 days or first or second vaccination) in England and Wales in table 12 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset. There are currently 3 deaths registered with the aligning ICD codes for this. However, should this change, they will be updated in this table. This publication is due to be updated in July 2021.
We would be unable to disaggregate this figure further for you by age categories, as this would produce very low figures, which would be considered personal information. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individuals can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
Unfortunately, we do not hold any further information on adverse reactions to the vaccine, or vaccine injury. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) would be better placed to answer this request.
2. I would also appreciate a list of deaths post vaccine in under 60 year olds and also what time frame post vaccine you are utilising?
In order to provide analysis showing deaths post-vaccination in under 60-year-olds, we would be required to create of complex analysis by linking vaccination records to death registrations. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held. However, we are currently working on analysis on all aspects of the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality, which will be published soon. Once we have finalised these plans a publication date will be announced on our Release Calendar.
You can find figures published by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here.
3. What time frame post vaccine you are utilising? I am assuming that, as with Covid, you are basing your figures on the basis that any death 28 days from having had the vaccine is a "vaccine related death". Is this correct?
We can confirm that we do not classify deaths caused by an adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccination as any death that occurred within 28 days of vaccination. We class deaths from the vaccine as those where the doctor or coroner has stated on the death certificate that the death was caused by an adverse reaction to the vaccination. This process is how we classify all deaths.
To clarify, we do not record our COVID-19 deaths as those who have died following a positive COVID-19 test. We also use the information provided on the death certificate to classify these types of death.
The data to which you are referring in your query is produce by Public Health England (PHE). ONS and PHE COVID-19 death data are produced in different ways and have different purposes:
The daily COVID-19 deaths counts reported on the government's COVID-19 dashboard (produced by PHE) show deaths within 28 days of a first positive laboratory-confirmed test.
ONS weekly death registrations data for England and Wales, relate to the week that ended 11 days prior and are based on the cause of death reported on the death certificate, thereby not restricted to only deaths that showed a positive test.
More information can be found in a blog by Professor John Newton of Public Health England about the complexities of counting COVID-19 deaths and the different methods used.