You asked
Can you please tell me the following:
- How many people have died from Covid-19 in England at the date of addressing this request?
- Of these deaths, how many tested positive for Covid-19?
- Of these deaths, how many had comorbidities?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Total deaths involving and due to COVID-19 can be found within our Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional: week ending 4 December 2020. There have been 65,061 deaths due to and involving COVID-19 in England since January until the latest available date (week ending 4th December 2020).
We report deaths from COVID-19 based on the information on the death certificate. In order for COVID-19 to be included on a death certificate, a doctor can certify the involvement of COVID-19 based on symptoms and clinical findings. A positive test is not necessarily required. Definitions of COVID-19 deaths in Scotland and Northern Ireland are similar to England and Wales. Therefore, with regards to your question as to how many COVID-19 deaths recorded by ONS received a positive test, we do not hold this information.
You may be interested in daily figures that are published by Public Health England that show the number of deaths that occurred within 28 days of a positive lab-confirmed COVID test result: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
Information on COVID-19 deaths with pre-existing conditions can be found in the following dataset: Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales. Of the 50,335 deaths that occurred in March to June 2020 involving COVID-19 in England and Wales, 45,859 (91.1%) had at least one pre-existing condition, while 4,476 (8.9%) had none. In order to provide an update of this publication with data from July to present, we would need to create analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, public authorities are not obligated to create information in response to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.