FOI reference: FOI-2024-2440

You asked

If what is mentioned on a death certificate is "Long Covid", does this class as being a Covid death?

What does "since the...pandemic" mean in this publication?

We said

Thank you for your request.

In our deaths registered weekly in England and Wales publication, we classify deaths involving COVID-19 as those whereby any of the following International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10) codes are mentioned on the death certificate: 

  • U07.1: COVID-19, virus identified 

  • U07.2: COVID-19, virus not identified 

  • U09.9: Post COVID-19 condition, unspecified 

  • U10.9: Multisystem inflammatory syndrome associated with COVID-19, unspecified 

Note that "post COVID-19 condition" is the World Health Organisation's terminology for the condition commonly known as long COVID.

The sentence "the revisions in productivity since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic suggest that the underlying weakness in UK productivity growth remains" in our article on the impact of re-weighting the Labour Force Survey refers to revisions since the start of the pandemic. 

For clarity, please note that the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 pandemic to have ended on 5 May 2023, in so far as it no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.