You asked
FOI/2021/2316
Please can you provide the numbers of deaths that have occurred each week, from January 1 2020 to date, broken down by age groups, from 15 years of age upwards, for the following:
- Ischaemic Heart Disease
- Other cerebrovascular diseases
- Other circulatory diseases
- Heart Failure
We said
Thank you for your request.
The mortality data published by ONS are derived from the formal process of death registration. For Scotland and Northern Ireland statistics please contact National Records Scotland and NISRA respectively.
The information you have requested is considered 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. Furthermore, 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.
A full breakdown of mortality data by cause for 2020 is expected to be released in summer 2021.
ONS do have published annual mortality data available by cause for the years 2013-2019, this is available as part of our explorable dataset available on our NOMIS webservice.
All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) the coded mortality data available up to end of December 2019 is coded to version 2014 of the ICD10 framework. 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
The conditions you have requested are coded to the following ICD10 codes:
- Ischaemic Heart Disease – I20 – I25
- Cerebrovascular diseases – I60 – I69
- Other and unspecified disorders of the circulatory system – I95 – I99
- Heart Failure – I50
If you wish to search for previous years in NOMIS, please follow the instructions below using the ICD codes for your specified cause groups:
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)