FOI REF: FOI/2023/4969
You asked
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request that the following information be provided, following the ONS release of dataset 'Deaths by vaccination status, England' on 21st February 2023:
I note that the all-cause mortality totals within the dataset (Table 5) for 2022 are shown as 504,251. This is 36,000 fewer total deaths as listed within the ONS weekly mortality dataset for 2022. Can the ONS explain the missing 36,000 deaths and provide the vaccination status of those deaths
I note that 'Deaths involving COVID-19' has been used as the measure of 'Covid' deaths within the dataset. Can the dataset be expanded to break out the Covid deaths into two categories:
a) Deaths involving Covid
b) Deaths due to COVID-19 (U07.1, U07.2, U10.9)
Please you provide the all-cause mortality totals for Dose 4 & Dose 5 for 2022, by vaccination status
Please can you provide Covid mortality totals for Dose 4 & Dose 5 for 2022, by vaccination status
Please provide the population figures used for each cohort of vaccination status, used in the ASMR calculations.
You state that the 2021 census has been used to inform this dataset. The census does not capture 100% of the adult population in England and is only as reliable as the persons completing the form. Please advise why an uncontrolled form is being used instead of actual, known medical records held by the NHS and UK HSA regarding vaccination status.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Please see the following answers to your queries.
Q1
The two datasets are not comparable. The weekly mortality dataset contains death registrations, whereas the deaths by vaccination status publication is based on death occurrences for people aged 10+. The dataset is restricted to people enumerated at 2021 Census who could be linked to the NHS Personal Demographics Service. In addition, people are omitted from the deaths by vaccination status dataset where a vaccination status could not be assigned (for example if there was ambiguous vaccination data).
Q2
Of the 45,191 deaths involving COVID-19 in the dataset used to calculate the age-standardised mortality rates, 32,632 (72.2%) were 'due to' COVID-19. Here, COVID-19 is defined as having either of the ICD-10 codes U07.1 or U07.2 on the death certificate, either as the underlying cause (for deaths 'due to' COVID-19) or mentioned anywhere on the death certificate (for deaths involving COVID-19).If this does not meet your needs, we can create a custom output. 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, consistent with our charging policy. Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
Q3 and 4
At the time of publication, data on doses 4 and 5 was not available to us. We plan to publish data on all-cause mortality for further doses in future publications.
As such, the information you have requested for Q3 and 4 is exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. As a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
Q5
The population by vaccination status changes over time. Therefore, we provide the population in person-years for each month, and this is provided in the dataset with the age-standardised mortality rates.
To provide the population figures requested, we could only do this for a specific day to show the numbers of people vaccinated at that point in time. Therefore, we would need to create a new dataset for each time point, which would require a high level of statistical skill and judgement to create a substantial amount of new information.
Public authorities are not required to create new information in order to answer FOI requests. Therefore, the information requested for Q5 is not held.
Unfortunately, we are also not in a position to offer to create this information via our bespoke services, as this could easily be misinterpreted or misused by the public. Someone could choose any time to recalculate rates inappropriately. We would therefore have concerns over whether such an output would comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics, as it would have limited or even negative public value. It is for this reason that we use person-years in our current outputs.
Person-years take into account the number of the time people spend in a vaccination state as well as how many people are in that state. 1 person spending 6 months unvaccinated and 2 people spending 3 months unvaccinated over a year would contribute 1 person-year to the unvaccinated vaccination status.
Information on vaccination uptake at different points in time is available from the ONS and from UKHSA.
Q6
We use the 2021 Census as a base dataset to calculate the age-standardised mortality rates. This is so that we can get an accurate number of people who did not die and were not vaccinated (as they would not appear in the vaccinations data from NIMS or the mortality dataset). We could not use vaccination data alone as we need the unvaccinated population. We include people who were enumerated in the 2021 Census and who linked to NHS number so that we can link on the vaccinations and mortality datasets.