FOI reference: FOI-2024-2088
You asked
Please provide the number of death certificate issues each year from the beginning of 2020 until now in Wales on where only COVID-19 is named as the cause of death.
Please supply a breakdown according to the seven different areas covered by the seven Welsh health boards.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of mortality statistics for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from death certificates at death registration.
Deaths from COVID-19 may include cases where the doctor completing the death certificate diagnosed possible cases of COVID-19, for example, where this was based on relevant symptoms but no test for the virus was conducted. Deaths with a positive test are coded using the ICD10 code U0.71 and those with suspected COVID-19 but no test has been conducted are coded with ICD10 U0.72.
We have produced the following analysis on this topic: Pre-existing conditions of people whose death was recorded with an underlying cause of COVID-19. This dataset provides a greater insight into the leading pre-existing cause of death groups, for deaths occurring in England and Wales that were due to COVID-19. Please refer to the data labelled 'no pre-existing conditions' for the information you require. This is for Wales as a whole. This release contains information on deaths registered between January 2020 and June 2023.
The further analysis requested would need to be created as a custom output. Information on deaths due to COVID-19 alone along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales may be available to order. Please note these services are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs in line with our charging policy.
Please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk for more information.