FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3348
You asked
Please supply a list of actual causes of deaths in UK by pre-existing conditions in numerical order from December 2019 to December 2021.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry regard all deaths by pre-existing conditions.
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.
The concept of 'pre-existing conditions' in the context of death certification was introduced by ONS in 2020 to provide additional information about the groups of people who were most at risk of death due to COVID-19. This concept is only meaningful in relation to deaths where the underlying cause is an acute health condition of sudden and distinct onset, such as COVID-19 or another infectious disease.
We do not hold information on all deaths by pre-existing conditions, except COVID-19. However, we can provide the numbers of deaths where any specific condition was mentioned on the death certificate while not being the underlying cause of death. These 'mentions' show that in the opinion of the certifying doctor or coroner the condition of interest was involved in or contributed to the death in some way, but cannot be taken to indicate any particular causal or temporal relationship with the underlying cause of death without further information.
For enquiries about specific 'mentions' for England and Wales, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
You may also find the following information useful:
We hold the following analysis Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics which provides data for 2020 and up to and including quarter 3 of 2021.
Table 1 shows the number and proportion of death certificates where the death was due to COVID-19 that had the top 20 (by frequency) pre-existing conditions by broad age band.
If this does not meet your needs, we can create a custom output. Information on COVID-19 deaths by pre-existing condition in England and Wales along with other 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.
October 2021 to December 2021 data will be published in February 2022.