Deaths from COVID-19 with no pre-existing condition by age

You asked

​​Please can you tell me the number of people who have died from COVID in the United Kingdom with no underlying or pre-existing conditions?

I would like to know this information by age group, in particular the number under 65 years of age and under 75 years of age.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry

We are responsible for producing mortality statistics for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and 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.

We have been producing the following publication, Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales, in the response to COVID-19. This publication provides a greater insight into the leading underlying causes of death groups for deaths occurring in England and Wales between March and June 2020.

We define a pre-existing condition here as the last health condition mentioned on the first part of the death certificate when it came before the coronavirus (COVID-19) or was an independent contributory factor in the death, mentioned in part II. Where only COVID-19 was recorded on the death certificate, or COVID-19 and subsequent conditions caused by COVID-19 were recorded, we refer to these deaths as having "No pre-existing conditions". 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.

Notes:                                                  

1. Figures include deaths of non-residents                                                          

2. Figures are provisional                                                    

3. Based on deaths involving COVID-19 (ICD-10 codes U07.1 and U07.2) rather than deaths where COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death                                              

4. Deaths occurring between March and June 2020 rather than deaths registered between March and June 2020            

5. Main pre-existing causes are grouped using the ONS Leading Causes of Deaths list (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/methodologies/userguidetomortalitystatistics/leadingcausesofdeathinenglandandwalesrevised2016) and International Classification of Disease version 10 blocks of causes.                              

6. Including deaths registered up until 4 July 2020.

Please note, this publication has been paused. Therefore, in order to provide an update of this information from July to December 2020, we would need to create bespoke analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.

Provisional monthly death registration data for England and Wales, broken down by sex, age and country are now available in this monthly publication: Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales. This publication contains data from July onwards and includes deaths due to COVID-19 and leading causes of death. Leading causes is also available on table 11 and includes figures for the five-year average.

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