You asked
Please provide the number of deaths where the sole cause of death was COVID-19 with no underlying medical health issues.
Please also provide the number of people who have died from with no underlying health conditions.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. Our leading causes of death groupings are based on a list developed by the World Health Organization (WHO). This categorises causes of death using the International Classification of Diseases, tenth edition (ICD-10) into groups that are epidemiologically more meaningful than single ICD-10 codes, for the purpose of comparing the most common causes of death in the population.
In the following publication: Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales: deaths occurring in April 2020, there were 33,841 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) that occurred between 1 March and 30 April 2020 registered up to 5 May 2020 in England and Wales; of these, 32,143 (95.0%) had COVID-19 assigned as the underlying cause of death.
Of the 33,841 deaths that occurred in March and April 2020 involving COVID-19 in England and Wales, 30,577 (90.4%) had at least one pre-existing condition, while 3,264 (9.6%) had none.
The most common main pre-existing condition in England and Wales was Dementia and Alzheimer disease, with 6,887 deaths (20.4% of all deaths involving COVID-19).
Ischaemic heart diseases is now the second most common main pre-existing condition across all ages and sexes in England and Wales, with 3,647 deaths (10.8% of all deaths involving COVID-19 in March and April 2020).
Our accompanying methodology article may also be of interest to you: Measuring pre-existing health conditions in death certification – deaths involving COVID-19.