Hospital admissions and deaths due to COVID-19 by vaccination status

​FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4030

You asked

Please could you provide data for the following criteria and break this data down by Vaccinated vs Unvaccinated (where "Unvaccinated" means having never received any COVID19 vaccinations). I would like the data for the following period 24 March 2021 – 20 March, 2022, with monthly data points.

• Hospital admissions because of COVID19 symptoms
• People on ventilators because of COVID19 symptoms
• Deaths where COVID-19 was a cause of death

We said

Thank you for your request.

Hospitalisations and ventilated patients due to COVID-19

Our data on hospital episodes is obtained from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) published by NHS Digital. We use this raw data to determine pre-existing conditions and general health of individuals, but not to analyse hospitalisations due to specific causes.

In order to fulfil this request, we would need to use a high level of statistical skill and judgement as we would need to link National Immunisations Management System (NIMS) data with HES data. It is also not possible to identify ventilated patients from the Hospital Episode (HES) Dataset alone. Consequently, the requested information is not held. As we obtained this information from NHS Digital, they may be better placed to answer your queries. They can be contacted at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.

COVID-19 deaths by vaccination status

We hold the following analysis "Deaths involving COVID-19 by Vaccination Status, England: deaths occurring between 2 January and 31 January 2022".

Table 5 of this publication shows monthly age-standardised mortality rates by age-group and vaccination status for deaths involving COVID-19 from January 2021 to January 2022. This fulfills your third query.

Table 8 provides an overview of COVID-19 and all cause deaths by vaccination status.

This includes the following vaccine status:

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.

Please note, this publication does not provide analysis of deaths directly attributed to the COVID-19 vaccination.

Data for February and March 2022 will be published in our next publication on 16 May 2022.

As such, the information you have requested for February and March 2022 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.