Vaccination rates in the UK, deaths from COVID-19 within 28 days of the vaccine, and deaths caused by the vaccine

You asked

Could you please, as a freedom of information request, confirm the following;

1. How many people out of the UK's population have been vaccinated to date since Dec 2020

2. How many people have died with covid in 28 days of receiving any of the covid-19 vaccines?

3. How many people have died from the sole cause of death being the covid-19 vaccine?

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

COVID-19 vaccination rates:

We do not hold the requested analysis for the whole of the UK. However, we do hold the following analysis looking at vaccination rates in set age groups in England:

Coronavirus and vaccination rates in people aged 70 years and over by socio-demographic characteristic, England - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

Coronavirus and vaccination rates in people aged 50 years and over by socio-demographic characteristic, England - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

Coronavirus and vaccination rates in people aged 40 years and over by socio-demographic characteristics, England: 8 December 2020 to 15 May 2021 - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

NHS Digital may be able to assist further with your enquiry. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.

Deaths from COVID-19 28 days following a COVID-19 vaccination:

This information requires complex analysis linking vaccination records to death registrations. We are working on analysis on all aspects of the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality, which will be published in June. Once we have finalised these plans a publication date will be announced on our Release Calendar.

As such, the information you have requested 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.

You can find figures published by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here.

Deaths after receipt of COVID-19 vaccine:

You can find the number of deaths involving COVID-19 (not restricted to first or second vaccination) in table 12 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset, these include figures for deaths involving adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination. There are currently 2 deaths registered with the aligning ICD codes for this. However, should this change, they will be updated in this table. This publication is due to be updated in June 2021.