COVID-19 deaths by age with no underlying conditions and deaths caused by influenza

You asked

Please provide:

1. COVID-19 deaths by age without any underlying health conditions for 2019 and 2020 in the UK. Please could these be compared to overall deaths for comparison purposes.

2. The past 10 years deaths statistics in the UK of influenza-related viruses.

We said

​Thank you for your request.

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, particularly deaths from COVID-19 with no underlying health conditions and influenza deaths in these countries. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.

Unfortunately, we would be unable to provide COVID-19 deaths for 2019, as there are no registered deaths with this cause for this period. Therefore, we do not hold this information.

However, please see the following data we have available related to your request for England and Wales:

Deaths where only COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate and deaths from all causes

We have been producing Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 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. COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales where there was no pre-existing condition between March and June 2020 by age group can be found on Table 6a.

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 had been paused in the summer of 2020 due to the decrease in the number of deaths. However, owing to public demand, we have been reassessing the possibility of resuming this publication.

We have now reached a decision, and we plan to include the analysis referenced in your request in our Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales publication, starting from 26 February 2021.

As part of these plans we will update the information we have already published. This is because the deaths in the tables you cited are based on the date a death occurred and not on the date a death was registered. This will enable us to include any deaths that occurred before July 2020, but had not yet been registered by the time we published the last update for Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales.

As such, the information you have requested from July onwards 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.

Deaths involving COVID-19, which includes deaths where other conditions were mentioned on the deaths certificate, by age for the UK are available within our Deaths Registered Weekly publication, alongside deaths from all causes for comparison.

Annual mortality totals for 2019 and 2020 can be found via the following link to a previously answered FOI request: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/annualtotalsfor2019and2020includingdaterange

Deaths due to Influenza 2010 to 2019 in England and Wales

Please see the following ad-hoc dataset: Number of deaths where influenza was the underlying cause of death or was mentioned on the death certificate, by five-year age group, England and Wales, 2001 to 2016.

Please refer to Table 1 of this publication, which provides figures where influenza was considered to be the underlying cause of death from 2001 to 2016 by five-year age band.

The annual number of deaths where influenza was the underlying cause can be obtained via NOMIS Webservice for 2013 to 2019. Influenza can be identified using ICD-10 codes J09-J11. The following table has been extracted from NOMIS to show the number of deaths caused by influenza (J09-J11) for all ages from 2013 to 2019:

Deaths due to influenza in 2020 in England and Wales

Analysis of deaths occurring between 1 January and 31 August 2020, including a split of influenza and pneumonia figures for England and Wales and comparisons of deaths from COVID-19 with deaths from influenza and pneumonia are available via the following link: Deaths due to coronavirus (COVID-19) compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia, England and Wales. This publication states that between 1 January and 31 August 2020, there were 394 deaths due to influenza.

Figure 2 of our Deaths registered weekly bulletin shows the number of deaths in 2020 in England and Wales due to influenza and pneumonia and the number of deaths involving influenza and pneumonia.

"Due to" refers only to deaths where influenza and pneumonia was recorded as the underlying cause of death and "involving" referring to deaths that had influenza and pneumonia mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not. Please see the 'download data' option at the bottom of Figure 2 for these statistics.

In this publication, influenza deaths are not shown separately. Figures for both 'Influenza and Pneumonia' are grouped together (J09 – J18). The following figure has been summed from the dataset to produce the number of deaths due to influenza and pneumonia in 2020 (where these were considered to be the underlying cause): 20,523.

A full breakdown of mortality data by underlying cause, such as influenza, for England and Wales in 2020 is expected to be released in July 2021.