Percentage of COVID-19 deaths with a pre-existing condition September 2019 to 2020

You asked

Please would you tell me for a year to the end of September 2020 how many persons and what percentage who died from coronavirus already had a pre-existing condition.

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. 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 in the response to COVID-19: Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales. Tables 5, 6a, 6b, and 6c of this publication provide COVID-19 death figures broken down by underlying health condition in England and Wales between March and June 2020. Please also see the following information, showing the number and percentage of deaths with and without pre-existing health conditions from March to June 2020.

COVID-19 deaths with underlying health conditions

Figures for COVID-19 deaths with underlying health conditions are available on Table 5 of the above publication. Main pre-existing causes are grouped using the ONS Leading Causes of Deaths list and International Classification of Disease version 10 blocks of causes.

• With pre-existing condition: England and Wales – 45,859
• With pre-existing condition: England – 43,640
• With pre-existing condition: Wales – 2156

COVID-19 deaths with no underlying health condition

Figures for COVID-19 deaths with no underlying health conditions are available on Table 5, this means where no other underlying condition was listed on the death certificate.

• No pre-existing condition: England and Wales – 4476

• No pre-existing condition: England – 4169

• No pre-existing condition: Wales – 294

Percentage of deaths with underlying conditions:

We are no longer publishing monthly COVID deaths with details around the death such as pre-existing conditions or no underlying cause due to the decrease in the number of COVID-19 related deaths. Whilst the number of infections appear to be rising, the number of COVID-19 deaths from July onwards are very small, which poses a disclosure risk, making it entirely possible to identify individual records.

We will certainly look to publish this data again should there be a significant rise in deaths, this is required for us to avoid risk of disclosure. We are constantly reassessing this to see how we can continue to publish analysis to inform users.

Consequently, we would be unable to provide a breakdown of COVID-19 deaths by pre-existing and no pre-existing condition for July to September 2020, as we do not hold analysis for this.

You may be interested in the following publication, Monthly Mortality Analysis. This shows provisional death registration data for England and Wales, broken down by sex, age and country. The publication also includes deaths due to COVID-19 and leading causes of death.

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