FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4148
You asked
I would like to know for all deaths involving COVID19, how many had COVID19 listed in section 1a, 1b, 1c and 2? Please provide response via email if possible.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration.
The doctor certifying the death lists all causes in the chain of events that led to the death, and any pre-existing conditions that may have contributed to the death. Using this information, we determine an underlying cause of death. Detailed information about ONS's cause of death coding can be found in our User Guide to Mortality Statistics (Section 9).
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 use the term "due to" COVID-19 when referring only to deaths where it was the underlying (primary) cause of death. We use the term "involving" when referring to deaths where COVID was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.
Although we have not published a breakdown of COVID deaths by which specific part of the death certificate that it was recorded, we have published numbers of deaths due to or involving COVID-19 for England and Wales, 2020 to 2022, in our latest weekly deaths publication.
We also publish numbers of deaths due to COVID-19, by main pre-existing condition, and where no pre-existing condition was recorded in our Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales publication. These statistics are published as part of our Monthly mortality analysis publication.
The statistics in both our weekly and monthly publications are produced by searching Part I and Part II of the death certificate, as explained above.
If you still wish to obtain a specific breakdown of COVID deaths according to which part of the death certificate it was recorded, then we can create this for you as a bespoke tabulation. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales is available to order but is subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate. Such enquiries can be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
If you wish to discuss this bespoke request further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.