Deaths from COVID-19 who have had an autopsy or inquest to confirm that they have died from COVID-19

You asked

Can you please declare how many of the deaths in England and Wales in 2020-2021 attributed to COVID-19 or SARS Cov-2 have had an autopsy and inquest to confirm they died as a result of that virus.

We said

Thank you for your request.

We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. For Scotland and Northern Ireland statistics please contact National Records Scotland and NISRA respectively.

Unfortunately, we do not hold the information you have requested. We are unable provide you with the number of COVID-19 deaths that were confirmed via an inquest as this information is not supplied to us on the death certificate.

However, we can confirm that COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales are recorded using the internationally adopted ICD10 coding system. Under this system, deaths with a positive COVID-19 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.

If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.