You asked
Could you please tell me the top 10 causes of death for each of the last 10 years - including the number of deaths for each cause?
Could you please also confirm how many deaths have COVID-19 as the ONLY cause of death on their death certificate since COVID records began until the most recent possible date?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Leading causes of death:
Leading causes of death, UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) provides the Leading causes of death in the UK from 2001-2018.
Table 9 of the Deaths Registered Series will provide 2019 data for England and Wales. Finalised 2020 data will be available on the publication of DR Series 2020 in July 2021.
Our Monthly mortality analysis publication provides a year-to-date breakdown of leading cause deaths for 2020. However, please note this data are still provisional.
If this does not meet your needs, we may be able to create a custom output. Information on top ten causes of death along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and can be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
Deaths from COVID-19 only:
We report the number of deaths due to COVID-19, registered in England and Wales in 2020, by leading cause and main pre-existing condition (including where COVID-19 was the sole condition mentioned on the death certificate) in the Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales publication and in the following dataset: Pre-existing conditions of those who died due to COVID-19. Figures for January to March 2021 will be available in the next update of this publication on 22 April 2021.
In case it is of interest, we also publish a breakdown of deaths 'due to' COVID-19 (where it was recorded as the underlying cause of death) and deaths 'involving' COVID-19 (where it was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate) in our latest provisional weekly deaths publication. The breakdown is available to download in Figure 2 of this publication. Please be aware that deaths 'due to' COVID means it was the underlying (primary) cause, but other contributory causes could still have been mentioned in those deaths.
Here is a summed total from January 2020 to 2 April 2021.
Deaths due to COVID-19 (Underlying cause): 122,508
Deaths involving COVID-19 (Contributory cause): 136,679