FOI reference: FOI-2025-3149
You asked
I write to request a year on year total of, diagnosis of, and deaths in the UK in the period 2005 to 2025, from Myocarditis and Pericarditis including age and severity.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of mortality statistics for England and Wales; this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at 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 do not hold data on the number of diagnosed cases or severity of myocarditis and pericarditis. Please contact the following Health agencies who are better placed to answer your enquiry.
England: NHS England at england.contactus@nhs.net
Wales: Public Health Wales at foi.phw@wales.nhs.uk
Scotland: Public Health Scotland at PHS.FOI@phs.scot
Northern Ireland: Public Health Agency for Northern Ireland at Foi.pha@hscni.net
You may also find the Myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination: clinical management guidance for healthcare professionals report helpful. This report has been written by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), in partnership with the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM). They have produced this clinical guidance to support the detection and management of clinical cases of myocarditis and pericarditis associated with coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination. The report includes a link to reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, following vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines received by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Deaths
All conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). The coded mortality data available up to end of December 2019 is coded to version 2014 of the ICD10 framework. 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 World Health Organisation (WHO) as:
the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or
the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
We have published this bespoke tabulation which provides numbers of Deaths from acute myocarditis or cardiomyopathy by age, gender and month of occurrence, England and Wales: 2001 to 2014.
We have also published mortality data by cause for 2013 to 2023 in the explorable dataset available on our NOMIS webservice. This explorable dataset can be used to extract figures where myocarditis (I40) and pericarditis (I30) was recorded as the underlying cause of death. Instructions for this service:
Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority)
Select date (years available from 2013 to 2023)
Select age (all ages or 5 year age bands)
Select gender (total, or male or female)
Select rates (all deaths, rates or percentage of population, for example)
Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available). (I40, I30)
Select format (Excel or CSV, for example)
Furthermore, we have a back series of data as part of our 21st century mortality statistics, which contains all-cause mortality data by ICD code, age and sex, for 2001 to 2021 in England and Wales. These figures contain four-digit ICD codes, which are subgroups of a cause. All codes relating to myocarditis and pericarditis are:
- I30: Acute pericarditis
- I300: Acute nonspecific idiopathic pericarditis
- I301: Infective pericarditis
- I308: Other forms of acute pericarditis
- I309: Acute pericarditis, unspecified
- I40: Acute myocarditis
- I400: Infective myocarditis
- I401: Isolated myocarditis
- I408: Other acute myocarditis
- I409: Acute myocarditis, unspecified
If these publications do not meet your needs, we can create a custom output. Information on the number of deaths due to myocarditis and pericarditis by age-group between 2005 and 2024, 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).
Please note that we are still in the data collection period for 2025 so do not currently hold information on deaths by cause for this period.
Please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk for more information on this service.