UK COVID-19 deaths by age with no underlying conditions

You asked

Please can you send me the following information:

Exactly how many people in the UK,of working age, without underlying co- morbidities, have died of Covid-19 from March 2020 - Jan 2021?

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.

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.

We can provide information for leading causes by age for England and Wales in table 6a, age bands from 0-44, then five-year age bands up to 90+ thereafter.

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 in table 11a and 11b and includes figures for the five-year average.

We had paused the publication showing monthly COVID-19 deaths with details around the death such as pre-existing conditions or no underlying cause. This publication had been paused in the summer of 2020 due to the decrease in the number of deaths. However, owing to public demand, we have been reassessing the possibility of resuming this publication. We have now reached a decision, and we plan to include the analysis referenced in your request in our Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales publication, starting from 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.

If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.