You asked
How many people have died in the UK from COVID 19 alone? I can see the figures that you publish online but these are deaths within 28 days of a positive test, so they could've died of other causes. I would like to know the exact figure from the 1st of February 2020 until the 20th of January 2021 or the latest available date of people that have died due to COVID 19 with no underlying health conditions or anything else.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and the 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.
The mortality data published by ONS are derived from the formal process of death registration. 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. This differs to the data published on the GOV.UK website which are counts of all causes of death where a positive test for COVID-19 has been confirmed.
We do not have access to data on when the test was conducted as this is not recorded on the death certificate. 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.
ONS have been producing Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales in the response to COVID-19. 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.
We define a pre-existing condition here as the last health condition mentioned on the first part of the death certificate when it came before the coronavirus (COVID-19) or was an independent contributory factor in the death, mentioned in part II. Where only COVID-19 was recorded on the death certificate, or COVID-19 and subsequent conditions caused by COVID-19 were recorded, we refer to these deaths as having "No pre-existing conditions".
Of the 50,335 deaths that occurred in March to June 2020 involving COVID-19 in England and Wales, 45,859 (91.1%) had at least one pre-existing condition, while 4,476 (8.9%) had none. COVID-19 deaths where there was no pre-existing condition between March and June 2020 are included below, this can be found on table 5.
- No pre-existing condition: England and Wales – 4476
- No pre-existing condition: England – 4169
- No pre-existing condition: Wales – 294
Provisional monthly death registration data for England and Wales, broken down by sex, age and country are now available in this monthly publication: Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales. This publication contains data from July onwards and includes deaths due to COVID-19 and leading causes of death. Leading causes are also available for England and Wales on tables 11a and 11b includes figures for the five-year average.
We are no longer publishing monthly COVID-19 deaths with details around the death such as pre-existing conditions or no underlying cause. This publication was paused in the summer of 2020 due to the decrease in the number of deaths. These figures will now be included in our Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales starting 26 February 2021.
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.
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.
I have also added the total figures for you below for COVID-19 deaths that were registered up to week ending 5th February. COVID-19 is the underlying cause of death in around 90% of deaths where it was mentioned on the death certificate. However, these figures do not exclude other secondary causes that may have contributed to a death. I have summed the figures for you below:
- Deaths involving COVID-19 (underlying or secondary cause): 118,554
- Deaths due to COVID-19 (underlying cause): 107,044
If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.