Weekly breakdown of deaths and hospitalisations by week, age, sex, ethnicity, cause in 2020

You asked

I request the following information on death rates and causes of death from 00.01hrs from 1 January 2020 until 23.59 hours on 31 December 2020.

• Weekly death rates for each demography

• Weekly causes of death by each demography

• Total number of individuals tested for Covid. NOT the total number of tests as some people have more than one.
• Number of weekly death rate where COVID is the ONLY predisposing cause of death.
• Number of weekly cause of death where COVID is mentioned as a DIRECT contributing factor.
• Number of weekly cause of death where COVID is NOT mentioned on the death certificate
• The top 10 causes of death - from week 1 until week 52 of 2020
• How many operations in HNS hospitals have been cancelled? From week 1 2020 to week 52 2020. please break down into type and area eg back surgery Orthopaedics etc
• How many cancer treatments have been delayed or postponed?
• How many dental surgeries have been closed?
• How many dental procedures have been cancelled?
• How many people have accessed GP services on a weekly basis between 1st January 2020 and 31st December 2020?
• How many of these GP consultations resulted in hospital admissions?
• How many deaths were there in the Community by condition, age, sex etc

Where demography is used - please break down into age, sex, ethnic grouping.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

In order to provide you with weekly death rates, deaths by cause of death, age, sex and ethnic grouping, weekly top 10 causes of death, or deaths in the community by age and cause for 2020, 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.

However, under the Freedom of Information Act, we can provide the following information:

Weekly deaths by age and sex

Within our Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales series we publish weekly deaths by 5-year age band. This publication provides weekly death totals from all causes and weekly COVID-19 deaths.

COVID-19 deaths

The doctor or coroner certifying a death can record more than one health condition or event on the form. The medical certificate of cause of death has two parts, Part 1 contains the sequence of health conditions or events leading directly to death, while Part 2 can contain other health conditions that contributed to the death but were not part of the direct sequence. For statistical purposes one of the health conditions on the certificate is chosen as the 'underlying cause of death'. The underlying cause of death is defined as the health condition or event that started the train of events leading to death and is worked out according to rules from the World Health Organisation (WHO). COVID-19 is the underlying cause of death in around 92% of deaths where it was mentioned on the death certificate.

You can read in detail about the coding of causes of death and identifying the underlying cause in the ONS User guide to mortality statistics and the WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) instruction manual.

COVID-19 deaths both 'involving' and 'due to' COVID-19 can be found in figure 2 of our Deaths Registered Weekly publication using the Download my Data button. We use the term "due to COVID-19" when referring only to deaths where that illness was recorded as the underlying cause of death. We use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had that illness mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, either as underlying cause or contributory factor. Please see the following table taken from this publication, which provides these figures.

Monthly Mortality Analysis of leading causes of death

Within our Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales we publish monthly and year to date Leading causes of death.

We have provided year to date information below, however monthly data can be found within the publications.

Once 2020 death registrations are finalised in July 2021, we will be offering bespoke services for 2020 mortality data. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales will be available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate).

Deaths in the community

Our Death registrations and occurrences by local authority and health board shows deaths weekly by local authority and place of occurrence, such as private home, hospice, care home, hospital and other communal establishment.

Details on NHS establishments

We are unable to supply the following information regarding cancellation of operations, treatments, closure of dental surgeries, GP consultations, or hospital admissions resulting from GP consultation, as we do not hold this data.

NHS Digital and Public Health England (PHE) may be better placed to answer your query. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk and wn_coronavirus@phe.gov.uk respectively.

Total number of those tested positive for COVID-19

Please see the following previous FOI response, which provides the information we have regarding those testing positive for COVID-19: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/allpositivecovid19casesincludingthecyclethresholdanddeathstodatefromcovid19