Deaths from 2018 to 2021

FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2769

You asked

Please supply the following information:

• A comparison of deaths for ages 18 - 50 between July 2018 - July 2021 including cause of death and vaccination status

• Numbers and ages of hospital admissions with Coronavirus since January 2021 with and without vaccination

• Deaths and admissions between the years 2018 - 2021 from Guillain Barre Syndrome including age groups

• Deaths from suicide between 2018 - 2021 including age groups

• The organisation responsible for identifying and monitoring causes of death in respect of those who have been vaccinated

We said

Thank you for your request.

Q1. A comparison of deaths for ages 18 - 50 between July 2018 - July 2021 including cause of death and vaccination status

Our mortality data are derived from the formal process of death registration. We are provided with copies of all death certificates registered with the General Register Office for England and Wales.

Guidance notes for doctors to follow when certifying a death, including best practice and the Coronavirus Act 2020, are available here: Completing a medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD). The doctor or coroner certifying a death can record more than one health condition or event on the form. The medical certificate of cause of death has two parts, Part 1 contains the sequence of health conditions or events leading directly to death, while Part 2 can contain other health conditions that contributed to the death but were not part of the direct sequence. For statistical purposes one of the health conditions on the certificate is chosen as the 'underlying cause of death'.

You can read in detail about the coding of causes of death and identifying the underlying cause in the ONS User guide to mortality statistics and the WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) instruction manual. Further information regarding COVID-19 specifically is available in our Quality of mortality data during the coronavirus pandemic, England and Wales: 2020.

Vaccination status is not recorded on the death certificate. We do have data on COVID-19 vaccination, which is available for the analysis of deaths by linking together death registrations and vaccination records. We are currently working on analysis on all aspects of the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality, including:

• Information regarding deaths after vaccination from any cause.
• Information regarding deaths involving or due to COVID-19 after receiving COVID-19 vaccination.

This requires complex analysis linking vaccination records to death registrations. The release of the findings of this ongoing programme of research prior to completion would jeopardise the research project by potentially putting misleading data into the public domain, as the analysis would not be complete nor quality assured. In turn, this would harm our reputation as a producer of reliable, quality-assured, official statistics. If we were to release inaccurate or misleading data regarding this topic, the trust that the government and the public place in our research and statistics could be severely undermined, which would directly jeopardise our functions.  

Therefore, some of the requested information is exempt under Section 22A (b)(i) and (b)(iii), whereby the information requested was obtained in the course of conducting an ongoing programme of research, which we have a view to publish, and release prior to our planned schedule would prejudice the research programme itself and the organisation conducting the research.  

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, which requires time and space. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data, which is not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when the accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before. This is particularly important given the public health implications of data surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines.

The provisional release date for these publications is September 2021. Once publication dates are finalised, they will be announced on our Release Calendar.

In case it is of interest, you may wish to view the following information:

Death registrations for England and Wales for 2013 to 2020 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, cause of death, 5-year age group, sex and area of usual residence. Please see the following instruction for the use of this service:

• 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)

Please note, death registrations data for will be available once 2021 death registrations are finalised. These will be published in our Deaths Registered Series and NOMIS webservice in July 2022.

Q2. Numbers and ages of hospital admissions with Coronavirus since January 2021 with and without vaccination

We do hold data on hospitalisations involving COVID-19 and vaccination, however in order to provide the requested analysis, we would need to create a complex linked bespoke dataset. 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.

Please note, analysis of hospital admissions is not within our usual remit. NHS Digital and Public Health England (PHE) may be better placed to answer your query, as they routinely produce statistics regarding hospitalisations. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk and wn_coronavirus@phe.gov.uk respectively.

Q3. Deaths and admissions between the years 2018 - 2021 from Guillain Barre Syndrome including age groups

Death registrations for England and Wales for 2013 to 2020 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, age group, sex and area of usual residence.

Death registrations data for 2021 are still highly provisional and are still being processed, so we do not currently hold analysis for 2021.  This will be published once death registrations for 2021 are finalised and will be published via our DR Series and NOMIS in July 2022.

Guillain Barre Syndrome can be identified using ICD-10 code G61.0. We have included the figures for 2018 to 2020 in the table below. To create your own bespoke tabulations of mortality data using NOMIS, please see the aforementioned NOMIS instructions.

Unfortunately, we do not hold data on hospitalisations due to this condition. For this you will need to contact NHS Digital.

Q4. Deaths from suicide between 2018 - 2021 including age groups

The number of suicides by age group for England and Wales, 1981-2019, are available via the following link: Suicides in England and Wales: 2019 registrations. This publication will be updated to include 2020 data in September 2021. When a publication date is finalised, it will be announced via our release calendar. Finalised suicide data for 2021 will be published until Autumn 2022.

Suspected suicide deaths require an inquest, where a coroner investigates the circumstances leading to the death. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a delay between the date of death and the date of death registration, referred to as a registration delay. Registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be 5 to 6 months on average. More information about the impact of registration delays is available here. Due to late registrations, finalised suicide data for a complete calendar year is not available until around nine months after a year ends.

We hold provisional analysis for suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the most recent update including deaths that were registered from October to December of 2020. This publication presented numbers of deaths registered in 2020 with the median registration delay in Quarter 4 2020 being 177 days.

Q5. I would also like information on which organisation is responsible for identifying and monitoring causes of death in respect of those who have been vaccinated

We are responsible for official statistics on all causes of death. However, we have no specific remit in relation to vaccination. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for surveillance of adverse reactions to vaccination whether fatal or not.

If you wish to discuss any of this data further, please contact: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.