Quarterly deaths involving COVID-19 in 2020 and deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status

FOI/2022/3539

You asked

Can you provide the data showing COVID-19 deaths by each quarter in 2020 and does the ONS hold the data on the known falsified death certificates?

How many who died of COVID-19 in this data had been injected with the COVID-19 vaccine?

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Falsified Death Certificates

Doctors are required by law to certify the cause of death 'to the best of their knowledge and belief'. That means they use their medical expertise to decide the cause based on symptoms, physical examination, hospital records, laboratory tests, and all the other information available. If death is certified by a coroner, the Coroner's Court follows legal rules of evidence when deciding the causes of death. No-one has the power to tell a doctor or coroner to reach a particular decision about the cause of death. There are long-standing guidelines and processes which have to be followed, and some changes have been made to these to allow for the circumstances of the pandemic – but there is no change to the legal and professional obligation to record the cause of death accurately.

You can read the government guidelines for doctors on completing a medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD).

We do not hold information on falsified death certificates.

COVID-19 deaths by vaccination status

We hold the following analysis, which shows deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status in England from January to December 2021: Deaths involving COVID-19 by Vaccination Status, England.

In this analysis, we use 21 days after vaccination as a value, as this is when the vaccine is deemed to be effective. Please note this publication does not include deaths attributed to an adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Table 5 of this publication shows monthly age-standardised mortality rates by age-group and vaccination status for deaths involving COVID-19.

The data are for England only, as vaccinations data for Wales is not yet available to be linked to the mortality dataset and the PHDA covers England only.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) also publish data that could help answer your enquiry. They publish a weekly surveillance report which looks at the impact on hospitalisations, infection, vaccine effectiveness and COVID-19 mortality. They can be contacted on InformationRights@UKHSA.gov.uk.

The UKHSA weekly surveillance report includes numbers of COVID-19 deaths (defined as a death within 28 or 60 days of a positive COVID-19 test) for 4 week periods, by vaccination status, where vaccination status is defined relative to the infection date, rather than the date of death as for the ONS releases on deaths by vaccination status.