FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3568
You asked
Please supply how many people in the UK have died from COVID-19 without any underlying health conditions since March 2020.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at 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.
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 recommend using our pre-existing conditions methodology to answer this question as it removes any conditions caused by the underlying cause of death.
Please find attached link to previously published FOI which will answer your enquiry: Deaths due to COVID-19 in the UK with no pre-existing conditions by age from March 2020 to January 2022 - Office for National Statistics.
If this does not meet your needs, we can create a custom output. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
We would also recommend reading our recent blog on this subject: To say only 17,000 people have died from COVID-19 is highly misleading | National Statistical (ons.gov.uk)
If you require further information about this request, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.