FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2591
You asked
Please supply all the statistics for the rates of death and diseases of all children for the last 20 years by calendar month for 0-15-year olds. Please also supply the same ranges of data for 0-15-year olds of all the statistics for childhood vaccines uptakes and administration for the same period of the 20 years.
Please supply all data and information for the statistics regarding deaths and lifelong injuries of each of the childhood diseases that children are routinely immunised against.
Please provide all statistics of the deaths and injuries caused by the vaccines including the flu spray and COVID vaccines.
Please provide all data for the statistics of the prevalence of each of the diseases including flu in the UK for the past 20 years.
Please provide data and statistics of any COVID vaccines information you hold and any data you hold of the adverse reactions and deaths including use of them with children.
Please provide statistics for the prevalence of COVID 19 in children since the start of it and how many deaths and injuries have been caused to children from 0-15 years.
We said
Thank you for your request.
ONS mortality data
We are responsible for mortality statistics for England and Wales. For Scotland and Northern Ireland data, please contact National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Centre, respectively.
Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. All of 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 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
Question 1
We hold the following bespoke analysis, showing monthly deaths by single year of age from 2001 to 2018: Monthly deaths, England and Wales, deaths that occurred between 2001 and 2018.
Unfortunately, we do not hold this analysis broken down by cause of death or for 2019 to date. In order to provide this requested analysis, we would need to create bespoke analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.
We do offer bespoke services for all of our finalised data (up to 2020). Such services fall outside of the freedom of information regime and are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs. Such enquiries can be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
However, please note, it is unlikely that we could provide the cause of death and month of death combined because numbers will be small for some causes and therefore potentially disclosive. All bespoke tabulations are produced in line with our disclosure control policy.
Unfortunately, we do not hold information regarding vaccination status, other than those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19. NHS Digital may be better placed to help with this part of your query. You can also find statistics regarding flu vaccination uptake on Public Health England (PHE)'s website via the following link: Seasonal flu vaccine uptake in GP patients: monthly data, 2020 to 2021.
You may also be interested in the latest data on vaccination uptake, produced by PHE and published via the government's COVID-19 dashboard.
We are currently working on analysis of relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality. For more information, please refer to our answers to Questions 3 and 5.
Question 2
Mortality statistics by underlying cause of death (ICD code) and 5-year age group, for England and Wales, are available via the following open data sources:
NOMIS - This is an interactive web service that provides death registration statistics (numbers and rates) for England and Wales, for the period 2013 to 2020 by age group, sex, underlying cause of death and area of usual residence of the deceased.
Deaths Registered Series - Provides deaths registered between 2006 and 2020, by age, sex, selected underlying causes of death and the leading causes of death. Contains death rates and death registrations by area of residence and single year of age.
20th Century Mortality and 21st Century Mortality provides annual data on the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, from 1901 to 2020, by age group, sex, year and underlying cause of death, as defined using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Please use the following link to look up the ICD codes that are of interest to you: International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision.
Unfortunately, we do not hold data on lifelong injuries. This part of your request would be better placed with NHS Digital.
Questions 3 and 5
Deaths caused by vaccines can be found in the previously linked mortality publications using the following ICD-10 codes: Y58 to Y59.
The number of deaths involving adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination specifically are available in Table 12 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset. There are currently 3 deaths registered with the aligning ICD-10 codes for this (U12.9). The latest data available is for May 2021. This publication is due to be updated with data for June on 23 July 2021.
Due to the small number of deaths, we would be unable to disclose this information by age as this would constitute identifiable data. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individuals can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
It may also interest you to know that we are currently working on analysis on all aspects of the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality, including:
Information regarding deaths after 28 days of vaccination from any cause.
Information regarding deaths involving or due to COVID-19 after receiving COVID-19 vaccination.
This requires complex analysis linking vaccination records to death registrations. The provisional release time for these publications is August 2021. Once publication dates are finalised, they will be announced on our Release Calendar.
Unfortunately, we do not hold information on vaccine injury. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) may be better placed to assist with this part of your request.
Question 4
Unfortunately, we do not hold information on the prevalence of disease. NHS Digital may be better placed to assist with this query.
Question 6: Please provide statistics for the prevalence of COVID 19 in children since the start of it and how many deaths and injuries have been caused to children from 0-15 years.
Infections
The COVID-19 infection survey (CIS) is a household survey which refers to the number of current COVID-19 infections within the community population; community in this instance refers to private residential households and it excludes those in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings.
In the datasets for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales accompanying our latest bulletin, you can find the modelled daily rates of the population testing positive for COVID-19 by single year of age along with 95% upper and lower confidence intervals for these figures. These are found on tab 1i in the England dataset and tab 1e in the Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales datasets respectively.
Deaths
The analysis shows weekly mortality statistics for 2020/21: Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional. The dataset accompanying this bulletin provides this information broken down by 5-year age-band. Please see the tab 'Covid-19 -- Weekly registrations' to view this data. This analysis includes figures for respiratory disease, COVID-19 and influenza.
The following analysis shows mortality statistics for 2020/21, broken down by month: Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales. This includes figures for deaths involving COVID-19. Earlier versions of this publication are available here.
If you wish to discuss any of this further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.