Ref: FOI/2022/4481
You asked
Could I please have the number of registered deaths since January 2020 that only had covid listed on the death certificate split by age and sex
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Health conditions are recorded on the death certificate only if the certifying doctor or coroner believed they made some contribution to the death, direct or indirect. The death certificate does not include all health conditions from which the deceased might have suffered if they were not considered relevant.
The death certificate (Annex A (PDF, 224KB)) used in England and Wales is compatible with that recommended by WHO. It is set out in two parts. Part I gives the condition or sequence of conditions leading directly to death, while Part II gives details of any associated conditions that contributed to the death but are not part of the causal sequence.
We recommend using our pre-existing conditions methodology to answer this question as it removes any conditions caused by the underlying cause of death.
We define pre-existing conditions as those mentioned in Part 2 of the medical certificate of cause of death. If COVID-19 is mentioned in Part 1 on lines above other conditions also mentioned in Part 1, the last condition mentioned in Part 1 is also considered a pre-existing condition. We don't know exactly how many people who died from COVID-19 had no pre-existing health conditions, only how many did not have a pre-existing condition mentioned on the death certificate. A contributor to the cause of death is expected to have increased the likelihood of death, but this does not mean that the death would have been avoided in its absence.
We would also recommend reading our recent blog on this subject: To say only 17,000 people have died from COVID-19 is highly misleading.
We hold analysis showing deaths due to COVID-19 with no pre-existing conditions by broad age-band in England and Wales in the following publication: Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales. This is published quarterly within the Monthly Mortality Analysis publication:
The next release is scheduled for publication on 21 October 2022.
If this does not meet your needs, we can create a bespoke data set. Custom tabulations and extracts of mortality data are available to order from the HALE Customer services team. These extracts fall outside of the Freedom of information act and are subject to disclosure control, legal frameworks, resources, and agreement to costs under the ONS Charging policy.
If you would like to obtain a quote for this work or would like to discuss this information further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.