You asked
How many deaths that had Covid 19 on the death certificate were registered in Wales from January the 1st to December the 31 st in Wales 2020?
How many of these deaths occurred in people under the age of 65?
Do you know how many occurred with Covid only? If so please give me the numbers
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for producing mortality statistics for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration.
Table 11b of the December spreadsheet of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset provides the number of deaths where COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death on the death certificate from January to December 2020 in Wales.
Table 3 of the same spreadsheet provides the number of deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate from March to December 2020 in Wales. Please refer to the information beneath the 'Deaths involving COVID-19' heading.
We were producing Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales in the response to COVID-19. This publication provides a greater insight into the leading underlying causes of death groups for deaths occurring in England and Wales between March and June 2020.
Table 6c of this publication will provide deaths involving COVID-19 in Wales split by age-group and sex from March June 2020. Age groups are from 0-44 and then five-year age bands here after up to 90+.
Table 5 provides COVID-19 deaths in Wales where there was no pre-existing condition between March and June 2020. Please see the following figure for this:
- No pre-existing condition: Wales – 294
We define a pre-existing condition here as the last health condition mentioned on the first part of the death certificate when it came before the coronavirus (COVID-19) or was an independent contributory factor in the death, mentioned in part II. Where only COVID-19 was recorded on the death certificate, or COVID-19 and subsequent conditions caused by COVID-19 were recorded, we refer to these deaths as having "No pre-existing conditions".
This publication was paused in the summer of 2020 due to the decrease in the number of deaths. These figures will now be included in our Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales starting 26 February 2021
As such, deaths involving COVID-19 for Wales by age and where there were no pre-existing conditions is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk