You asked
FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2554
After reviewing death statistics from 2017-2020, why is it that, on the ONS website, 2020 figures are so significantly lower than previous years when we are in the midst of a pandemic & also significantly different to what the media portray?
Also, I would like to know how many people so far according to latest figures have died from having the vaccines from December 2020 - June 2021?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Our mortality data is derived from the death certificate. When a person dies, in most cases a doctor writes a medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) which is then recorded in the death registration (at a local authority registration office). The details are printed out as the official 'death certificate' for the next of kin. The same information is sent electronically from the registration office to ONS for us to produce statistics about causes of death. For some deaths, such as when the death was due to an accident or violence, there is a coroner's inquest to establish the facts and the coroner then decides the cause of death and sends their findings to the local registrar.
You can read in detail about the process of counting deaths and producing mortality statistics in the ONS User guide to mortality statistics.
All cause deaths 2010 to 2020:
Using the Deaths Registered Series for 2020, there were 607,922 deaths in England and Wales in 2020.
In table 1 of the publication, you will find annual deaths in England and Wales from 1838 to 2020. We have pasted data from the last ten years in the following table:
| Year | Persons | Males | Females |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 607,922 | 308,069 | 299,853 |
| 2019 | 530,841 | 265,300 | 265,541 |
| 2018 | 541,589 | 267,960 | 273,629 |
| 2017 | 533,253 | 262,678 | 270,575 |
| 2016 | 525,048 | 257,811 | 267,237 |
| 2015 | 529,655 | 257,207 | 272,448 |
| 2014 | 501,424 | 245,142 | 256,282 |
| 2013 | 506,790 | 245,585 | 261,205 |
| 2012 | 499,331 | 240,238 | 259,093 |
| 2011 | 484,367 | 234,660 | 249,707 |
| 2010 | 493,242 | 237,916 | 255,326 |
Download this table
.xls .csvDeaths caused by the vaccine:
Please see the following link to a previously answered FOI, which provides the vaccine mortality statistics that you have requested: COVID-19 vaccine deaths, hospitalisations, and disabilities - Office for National Statistics
You may also be interested in the following COVID-19 mortality data that we have available:
COVID-19 Deaths for 2020 can be found in our report Deaths due to COVID-19, registered in England and Wales. There were a total of 607,922 deaths registered in England and Wales in 2020. Of these deaths 81,795 involved COVID-19 (13.5% of all deaths), of which 73,766 were due to COVID-19 (12.1% of all deaths).
2021 data can be found in Deaths Registered Weekly in England and Wales, this publication is updated every Tuesday.
For further information, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.