Deaths from COVID-19 only and heart disease in Tamworth Borough Council

FOI Ref: ​FOI/2021/2623

You asked

1) How many deaths in the Tamworth Borough Council area in Staffordshire from Covid-19 only?... Meaning, only Covid-19 deaths with no other underlying health issues or comorbidities, I only require the exact figure from 1 March 2020 to 1 March 2021.

2) How many deaths in the Tamworth Borough Council area from Heart Disease from 1 March 2020 to 1 March 2021

3) Documentary evidence of any living virus, as in, any identified living individual virus that is not connected to any other living or decaying cell or matter, for example covid-19, hiv-aids, ebola, polio, measles etc. any virus

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Our mortality data are based on 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. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:

a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or

b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury.

1) Tamworth Borough Council deaths from COVID-19 only

Numbers and percentages of deaths where COVID-19 was recorded as the sole condition on the death certificate for England and Wales, are available in our Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales publication. The dataset can be found here. We do not publish this information by local authority because data at such a granular level are disclosive. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individual businesses or persons can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied. More information can be found in our disclosure control policy.

Provisional numbers of COVID-19 deaths registered in 2021 are available by local authority in our Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales publication. The dataset is available via the following link: Deaths registrations and occurrences by local authority and health board. Unfortunately this data is not broken down to show COVID-119 deaths as the sole cause. Comparable data for the period 2015 to 2019 can be found here.

We also publish COVID-19 related deaths for England and Wales in our weekly deaths publication. This includes deaths 'due to' COVID-19 (where it was recorded as the underlying cause of death) and deaths 'involving' COVID-19 (where it was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate).  The dataset is available here.  Please be aware that deaths 'due to' COVID means it was recorded as the underlying cause of death, but contributory causes could still have been mentioned. We publish a separate dataset showing the number of deaths where it was the sole condition in the monthly publication, as explained in previous paragraph.

2) Deaths in the Tamworth Borough Council area from Heart Disease from 1 March 2020 to 1 March 2021

Ischaemic heart disease is defined using ICD-10 codes I20-I25, these are a subcategory of Chapter IX 'Diseases of the circulatory system' which is defined using ICD-10 codes I00-I99. Deaths for these cause groups are shown in the table below.

Death registrations for local authorities in England and Wales are available to download via NOMIS.  This is an interactive web service that provides numbers of deaths and rates broken down by year of registration (2013 to 2020), age group, sex and area of usual residence. To create your own bespoke tabulations of mortality data within NOMIS, please follow these instructions:

• Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).
• Select Age - All ages or 5-year age bands.
• Select Gender - Total or Male/Female
• Select rates - All deaths, rates or percentage of population for example.
• Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available).
• Select format (Excel or CSV for example)

Unfortunately, we do not hold analysis showing the numbers of deaths from heart disease for the specific period March 2020 to March 2021. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.

Given the current situation with the COVID pandemic, we have increased our output of provisional data to aid specialist modelling work and to provide further information alongside our weekly deaths publication, however all other mortality data are based on finalised death registrations and are published in accordance with the ONS release calendar. The first release of finalised 2021 mortality data will be in the Deaths Registered (DR) Series in July 2022, followed shortly after by the release of detailed cause of death information to NOMIS.

3) Documentary evidence of any living virus, as in, any identified living individual virus that is not connected to any other living or decaying cell or matter, for example Covid-19, HIV-aids, Ebola, polio, measles etc. any virus.

We can only provide information for any of the viruses you have specified if they were recorded as the underlying cause of death or as a contributory factor. You can identify the ICD-10 codes used to define each virus by using the ICD-10 online lookup.

Should you wish to view any of this information in our publications, the relevant codes can be used to search for the information on our NOMIS webservice (instructions above) or our Deaths Registered Series and accompanying datasets.

If you have any further queries, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.