Sudden Adult Death Syndrome mortality statistics and the Covid-19 vaccination status of the deceased

FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4299

You asked

I have a simple request for the recent statistics pertaining to ' Sudden Adult Death Syndrome ' and Numerous other Diseases, Side Effects from The Vaccines used / administered for SARS-COV2 (COVID-19)

How Many of the Cases between Feb 2021 - July 2022 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM were in Vaccinated Individuals / Unvaccinated or Status Unknown Individuals

• SUDDEN ADULT DEATH SYNDROME
• MYOCARDITIS
• BLOOD CLOTS
• HEART ATTACKS

How many Cases Total do you know of for each?

How many of the cases were?

• Unvaccinated
• Single Dose
• Double Dose
• Triple Dose

If you do not hold this information, please direct me to the relevant department so I can contact them.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry

We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Therefore, we do not hold the requested data for the whole of the UK. Should you wish to obtain this data from NRS and NISRA, they can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.

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 World Health Organisation (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

In England and Wales, deaths where "Sudden Adult Death Syndrome" or "Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome" are mentioned on the death certificate are recorded with an ICD-10 code of R96 or I49.9 respectively.

The information you have requested part of our explorable dataset available on our NOMIS webservice

• Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).  
• Select Age - All ages or 5-year age bands.  
• Select Gender - Total or Male/Female  
• Select rates - All deaths, rates, or percentage of population for example.  
• Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available).  
• Select format (Excel or CSV for example)  

Please see Sudden Adult Death Syndrome and Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome Mortality statistics for 2021.

We have not yet conducted analysis of 2022 data for this specific cause of death. This is to allow the inclusion of late registrations which are deaths which have been referred to Coroner for investigation.

We have not conducted analysis of deaths by specific ICD-10 codes except for COVID-19 by vaccination status. Analysis of COVID-19 deaths and all cause deaths can be found in Deaths by vaccination status, England - Office for National Statistics.

If you would like to request a special extract of mortality data, such as deaths by specific cause and vaccination status or request provisional data for 2022 this can be ordered through the HALE Customer Services Team. Special extract and tabulations of mortality data are subject to disclosure control, legal frameworks, resources and agreement to costs under the ONS Charging policy.  Please note that we can provide you with deaths by Vaccination status for England by specific cause of death (subject to disclosure controls) however we cannot provide this for Wales as we do not have the Public Health Data Asset for Wales. Therefore, Mortality statistics broken down vaccination status for Wales is not held.

We can also provide a special extract of SADS deaths for both England and Wales for 2022 using provisional data however this will not include Vaccination status.

If you would like to discuss the bespoke services available to you or would like to receive a quote for this work, please contact the Customer Services team on Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.

Deaths due to adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccination

Our data is derived from the death certificate, using information received at the point of death registration. For the vaccine to be mentioned on the death certificate the medical professional certifying the death must have believed, to the best of their knowledge, that the vaccine was part of the events that led to the death. Deaths reported as due to or involving the COVID-19 vaccination are recorded using ICD-10 code U12.9.

We hold the following analysis in our Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales

Publication.  Table 13 of this publication provides number of deaths involving COVID-19 vaccines causing adverse effects in therapeutic use by age group for deaths registered in March 2020 to May 2022.

Data for June will be published on 25 July 2022.

For further information please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk

Injuries due to adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccination

ONS do not hold data regarding adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination that do not result in death, therefore, we consider this information not held.  

The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority's (MHRA) role is to continually monitor the safety of any medicine or vaccine once they are approved for use. Yellow Card is a website where any member of the public or health professional can report any suspected side effect. This includes deaths, which are reported by others on behalf of the deceased person. As the information is self-reported, it means that the suspected side effects are not always proven and some of the side effects may have occurred regardless of the vaccine. MHRA are better placed to answer your enquiry, as they are responsible for the Yellow Card Scheme. They can be contacted using this form  or by email on info@mhra.gov.uk.

More information regarding the difference in ONS data to Yellow Card scheme data can be found in this blog. How many people have died as a result of a COVID-19 vaccine? | National Statistical (ons.gov.uk).