You asked
Please provide the fatality rates from all COVID-19 vaccines within 28 days of having those vaccines and per age group in the UK.
Please provide the fatality rates for flu March 2019 to March 2020.
Please provide the fatality rates for flu March 2020 to date 2021.
Please also advise how many COVID-19 vaccine fatalities are and have been reported in the yellow cards section on www.gov.uk.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We only hold mortality data for England and Wales. Therefore, we do not hold any of the requested data for the whole of the UK. For Scotland and Northern Ireland data you will need to contact National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Centre, respectively.
Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. Information on whether the deceased was vaccinated is not recorded on the death certificate.
Deaths following the COVID-19 vaccine:
Deaths involving adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination are available in Table 12 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset. There are currently no deaths registered with the aligning ICD-10 codes for this cause. Should this change, this table will be updated.
We are currently developing our analytical plans with an intention to publish detailed vaccination statistics soon. Once we have finalised these plans a publication date will be announced on our Release Calendar.
COVID-19 vaccine fatalities reported via Yellow Card:
The latest data collected via Yellow Card reporting are available on their website here. This data is not produced by ONS. For queries and information about this data please use the contact details provided on the Yellow Card website.
In case it is of interest, data showing the impact of the vaccination campaign in reducing infections and illness in the UK are also produced by Public Health England and are available here: PHE monitoring of the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination. Deaths within 28 days of a positive test are also produced by Public Health England and published via the government's COVID-19 dashboard. ONS data is different to that produced by PHE. You can read a blog by Professor John Newton of Public Health England about the complexities of counting COVID-19 deaths and the different methods used. Please contact coronavirus-tracker@phe.gov.uk for queries about this data.
Influenza deaths:
The annual number of deaths where influenza was the underlying cause, for England and Wales, can be obtained via NOMIS for deaths registered between 2013 and 2019. Influenza can be identified using the underlying cause of death ICD-10 codes: J09-J11.
Provisional weekly numbers of deaths from influenza and pneumonia combined (ICD-10 codes J09-J18) for 2020 and 2021 are available in Figure 2 of our Provisional weekly deaths publication. This data is available to download as an excel file underneath the chart.
However, we do not hold analysis showing a monthly breakdown of deaths from influenza in 2019, 2020 or 2021. This information for England and Wales would need to be created as bespoke analysis. Data for 2019 are available to commission as bespoke analysis. Data for 2020 are still provisional and will be available to order after death registrations for 2020 are finalised and published in July 2021.
Such services are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request a bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk. Please note, there may be a charge for this work, in line with ONS charging policy.