FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4287
You asked
Please could you give me the statistics for the UK from year 2010 onwards for still births.
Please also include % of mothers of the still born babies who are vaccinated against COVID-19 in the specific year of 2021 and current figures for the year 2022.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of birth and mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at birth and death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
The latest annual analysis published is for stillbirths registered in 2020 (based on birth registrations) for England and Wales, this can be found in table 3 of our Birth summary tables.
Stillbirths for England and Wales from 1964 to 2020 is spilt by quarter of occurrence in our Births characteristics dataset table 3.
We have published Provisional births data for England and Wales which covers the period January to March 2021 (based on NHS birth notifications). The provisional birth data was based on NHS birth notification which is a document completed by the doctor or midwife present at the birth. The provisional data was produced in response to birth registration delays and the need for information to monitor the potential impact of COVID-19 pandemic on births. Currently there are no plans to publish further provisional births data.
The annual births release covering stillbirths in 2021 is provisionally scheduled for release in on 9 August 2022.
The annual births release covering stillbirths in 2022 is provisionally scheduled for release in the summer of 2023, however this is not yet confirmed.
If you have any further queries about this information, please contact us via email at Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
Stillbirths by vaccination status
Notwithstanding the release dates for standalone stillbirths' statistics as described above, the requested information regarding the percentage of stillbirths where the mother has been vaccinated is not held by our organisation.
While we hold both stillbirth and COVID-19 vaccination data separately, in order to create this information, we would be required to link our raw stillbirth's data with raw vaccination data, quality assure the linked dataset to check it is fit for purpose to produce robust statistics, and then conduct statistical analysis to produce the requested information. This process would require a high level of statistical skill and judgement, involving the use of statistical expertise and experience to change the raw information held into the requested analysis. Public authorities are not obligated to create new information in order to answer FOI requests. This information therefore is not held for FOI purposes.
However, we are conducting a programme of statistical work investigating the risk factors associated with pregnancy outcomes and COVID-19 infection, taking vaccination status into account. The first experimental statistics from that work have now been released: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19hospitaladmissionsbyvaccinationandpregnancystatusengland/8december2020to31august2021
This release focused on hospitalisation of the mother during pregnancy as the outcome, rather than stillbirth; the exact outputs and statistics which will be developed and released through the remainder of the programme, and therefore exactly which datasets will be linked to produce them, are yet to be confirmed.