Decision to stop publishing death by vaccination status July 2022

FOI REF: ​FOI/2023/4907

You asked

I request disclosure of the following:

All email exchanges which led up to the ONS decision to stop publishing data on death by vaccination status in July 2022.

We said

Thank you for your request

The Deaths by vaccination status, England analysis looks at deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), non-COVID-19 deaths and all deaths by vaccination status, broken down by age group and is produced by the Health Analysis and Pandemic Insight division.

The publication was not discontinued but was paused to allow the data to be analysed using new Census 2021 data. The decision to move from 2011 data to 2021 data was taken in order to give the most up to date picture of the situation in England.  

This change was discussed in team meetings once the 2021 Census data was available. The previous publications used Census 2011 data. This only covers 79% of the population because the rates are derived for the cohort of people enumerated at 2011 Census who were registered with a GP (General Practitioner) at the beginning of the pandemic and who were alive at the beginning of the month of interest. If we use Census 2021 data, we can be representative of a much larger proportion of the population including people who migrated since the 2011 Census and people too young to be included in the 2011 Census.

There are no emails relating to discussing the cessation of this publication, as there was no intention to cease publishing. However, please see the associated download containing an entry in our 'Decision Change Log'.

Personal data has been redacted from this document under s.40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Please note

We have removed some of the redactions made to the attached document named 'Decision Change Log.pdf'. These redactions were originally made only because the redacted information was not relevant to the FOI request and was therefore deemed out of scope. This is standard practice.

However, in the interests of transparency and public interest, we have now removed some of these redactions. In some other cases, the redactions remain – this is only because there is personal data present and so the information has been redacted in line with Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).