You asked
Could you please supply me with the following information:
(1) The death stats by month broken down by age since March 2020 to January 1st 2021 as follows:
0 to 20
21 to 40
41 to 60
61 to 80
81+
(2) The number of suicides reported by month.
(3) The number of patients known to have Covid-19 by month broken down by age as above.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:
a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or
b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
Deaths by age band in 2020:
Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by five-year age band, sex and region for 2020 and the first week of 2021 are available in the following dataset: Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales dataset. This accompanies the following publication: Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales.
Our monthly mortality analysis may also be of interest. This includes provisional death registration data for England and Wales, broken down by sex, age and country and includes deaths due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) and leading causes of death.
Suicide registrations up to 2019:
The annual number of suicides for England and Wales for 1981 to 2019 are available in the Suicides in England and Wales: 2019 registrations publication. This publication is updated annually in September, when a publication date is finalised it will be added to our release calendar.
The number of monthly suicides for 1981 to 2015 were published on an ad hoc basis in response to a previous customer request, you can view this data here: Suicides by month of occurrence, 1981 to 2015.
In order to provide a monthly breakdown of suicide data for 2016 to 2019, 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. However, 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). Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
Suicides registered in 2020:
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the most recent update including deaths that were registered from January to September of 2020. This is for deaths registered in 2020 and due to the registration delays, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019. The next update of this release is due on 30 April 2021.
This publication explains that the majority of suicides require an inquest, where a coroner must investigate the cause of death. The amount of time taken to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date the death occurred and the date the death is registered. We refer to this as a registration delay and registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be five to six months on average. Because our data are based on death registrations, this delay means that most deaths recorded for 2020 so far would have occurred in 2019. More detailed information can be found in the publication and more information about the impact of registration delays is available here.
The number of patients known to have Covid-19 by month broken down by age:
In the data set accompanying our latest bulletin you can find the following data:
Modelled daily rates of the percentage of the population testing positive for COVID-19 by age/school year, England on tab 1g.
Percentage testing positive for COVID-19 by age/school year and non-overlapping 14-day periods (weighted), England on tab 1h.