You asked
Under the Freedom Of Information Act 2000 I would like to request the following information:
1) Any information held on the number of Deaths directly caused by COVID-19 - not those who merely died within 28 days of a positive test, who, for example died in a tragic RTA / died due to a heart attack due to already known cardiac problems / end of life patients who sadly passed away from Cancer.
I would like this information, for all separate areas of the UK, showing their corresponding figures during the following period:
Starting: 01/01/2020
up to
Present Date: 02/04/2021
2) The number of deaths that have been caused directly by the new vaccines themselves - from the time they were rolled out to the public, up to present day 02/04/21 - I would like the figures for each of the separate Vaccines currently being given to people in the U.K. - Pfizer, Moderna and the Oxford AstraZeneca.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of Mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively
COVID-19 deaths by underlying cause:
Our data as described here are different from the figures on COVID-19 deaths published on the government's COVID-19 dashboard which shows 'deaths within 28 days of a positive test'. You can read a blog by Professor John Newton of Public Health England about the complexities of counting COVID-19 deaths and the different methods used.
If someone dies in circumstances involving an accident, violence or suspicious circumstances, the case is referred to a coroner for investigation. A post-mortem examination is carried out and usually an inquest is held. The Coroner's Court hears all the evidence and follows legal rules of evidence when deciding the causes of death. It is extremely unlikely that a coroner would find that someone was involved in a traffic accident, or was the victim of violence, because of having COVID-19 or a positive COVID-19 test -- so they would not mention COVID-19 on the death certificate. This applies to any death caused by an accident, violence, poisoning, or other external causes.
Even if in an unusual case a death certificate mentioned both COVID-19 and a traffic accident (or other external causes), the World Health Organisation (WHO) rules for coding deaths mean that the traffic accident would be identified as the underlying cause of death in our data.
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.
Figure 2 of our Deaths registered weekly bulletin shows the number of deaths due to COVID-19 and the number of deaths involving COVID-19 with "due to" referring only to deaths where COVID-19 was recorded as the underlying cause of death and "involving" referring to deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.
Please see the 'download data' option at the bottom of Figure 2.
Please also see the following summed totals for COVID-19 from January 2020 to week ending 9 April 2021:
- Deaths involving COVID-19 (underlying or contributory cause): 137,058
- Deaths due to COVID-19 (underlying cause): 122,788
Please also see the following publication, which you may find interesting: Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics. This provides deaths from COVID-19 with no pre-existing conditions from January 2020 to December 2020 by two broad age groups (1 to 64 and 65+).
Death from COVID-19 Vaccinations:
We publish monthly mortality analysis statistics and which can be found via the following link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/monthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales.
In Table 12 we include the deaths related to COVID-19 including deaths that may be caused by adverse reaction to COVID-19 vaccinations. Currently the number is 0.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.