FOI Ref: FOI/2022/4153
You asked
Do you hold autopsy reports? If so, please provide:
Since December 2019 until date of request, how many Autopsy reports have had Sars-Cov-2 mentioned anywhere on the autopsy report or any supporting documents?
Since December 2019 until date of request, how many Autopsy reports have the alleged Sars-Cov-2 virus as the cause of Death?
We said
Thank you for your request
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Doctors are required by law to certify the cause of death 'to the best of their knowledge and belief'. That means they use their medical expertise to decide the cause based on symptoms, physical examination, hospital records, laboratory tests, and all the other information available. If death is certified by a coroner, the Coroner's Court follows legal rules of evidence when deciding the causes of death. For deaths involving COVID-19, whether or not there was a positive test result is only one piece of information to be taken into account, alongside the patient's symptoms and other evidence. So, a death can be certified as involving COVID-19 without a positive test, based on any sound medical evidence, like observed symptoms or X-ray images of the lungs. In the absence of a test result, the doctor may sometimes certify the death as 'suspected' COVID-19. A positive test result does not make a death 'count' as involving COVID-19 if COVID-19 did not actually contribute to the death, for example if the person died in an accident.
A post-mortem would be requested if the death was sudden and the cause unknown, if there was no doctor in attendance, or if the death has been referred directly to the coroner by the police. Covid-19 is an acceptable direct or underlying cause of death for the purposes of completing the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death and Covid-19 is not a reason on its own to refer a death to a coroner under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.
Table 13 in our impact of registration delays on mortality statistics release shows that in 2020 1,615 of the 73,766 (2.2%) of deaths due to COVID-19 had a post-mortem.
The number of autopsy reports that had COVID-19 mentioned for 2021 will be available to order via our bespoke services from July 2022. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there will be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy and work can begin on this once the data have been finalised next month.
Post-mortems involve a coroner's inquest. Therefore, autopsy information is delayed by around 6 months, so we have not received enough data for 2022 yet to provide a representative figure. More information can be found in the following link regarding this: Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).
If you have any further queries on your request, please feel free to email the Health Data desk on Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.