You asked
Could you please could you provide up to date data on the amount of COVID deaths with and without underlying health conditions for the second half of 2020?
Your previous release ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/covid19deathsbrokendownbyunderlyinghealthcondition) said you were not longer producing this data due to a low level of deaths. Given the increase in deaths from June 2020 to present could you provided up to date information?
We said
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.
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.