FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2716
You asked
1) Please supply the number of deaths in those aged 1 to 39 (i.e. under 40) recorded as COVID-19 deaths where the deceased had no comorbidities (I.e. no pre-existing conditions) in the year 2020 (I.e. 01-Jan-2020 to 31-Dec-2020) for England and Wales.
2) Please supply the number of deaths in those aged 1 to 39 (i.e. under 40) recorded as COVID-19 deaths where the deceased had no comorbidities (I.e. no pre-existing conditions) in 'Quarter 1' of the current year (2021) for England and Wales.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We publish mortality data derived from the formal process of death registration. For Scotland and Northern Ireland statistics please contact National Records Scotland and NISRA respectively.
Deaths from COVID-19 may include cases where the doctor completing the death certificate diagnosed possible cases of COVID-19, for example, where this was based on relevant symptoms, but no test for the virus was conducted. Deaths with a positive test are coded using the ICD10 code U0.71 and those with suspected COVID-19, but no test has been conducted are coded with ICD10 U0.72.
We have been producing the following publication: Pre-existing conditions of people whose death was recorded with an underlying cause of COVID-19. This dataset can be found in section 8 of the Monthly mortality analysis bulletin. This dataset provides a greater insight into the leading pre-existing cause of death groups, for deaths occurring in England and Wales, in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 that were due to COVID-19.
Please see 'table 1a, row 28 (2020) and row 29 (2021)' for deaths where COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause, but had no other pre-existing conditions recorded on the death certificate, England and Wales. Table 1b represents these figures for England and table 1c figures are for Wales.
This publication will be updated quarterly. COVID-19 deaths involving pre-existing conditions is split by broad age groups between 1-64 and 65+. We do not hold the analysis split by the under 40 age-group you have requested. To fulfil this request, we would need to create bespoke analysis. 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.
There was a total of 9400 (0-64: 1549 / 65 and over: 7851) deaths in England and Wales 2020 and 6483 (0-64: 1560/ 65 and over: 4923) deaths registered in quarter 1 of 2021 that were due to COVID-19 and were recorded without any pre-existing conditions.
We have not yet finalised the analysis for quarter 2 of 2021 and this will be published at a later date.
If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.