Deaths due to COVID-19 in the 3 years preceding 2020

You asked

FOI/2021/2355

​Can you please tell me how many people in the UK died of coronavirus in the 3 years preceding 2020?

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.

Our mortality data for England and Wales comes from the information collected at death registration. All the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as:

a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or

b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury

The ICD-10 codes used to define Coronaviruses are:

• B34.2Coronavirus infection, unspecified site
• B97.2Coronavirus as the cause of diseases classified to other chapters

This information is available from our NOMIS webservice.

If this does not meet your needs, we may be able to create a custom output including all Coronavirus mentions. Information on deaths by specific ICD-10 code, along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate).

Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.