You asked
My queries relate specifically to week 42 of your data set for Total Deaths (all ages) England and Wales.
You have listed that there have been 1016 deaths for 'all underlying respiratory disease' and a further 670 from COVID-19.
Please can you confirm how many actual deaths there were from ALL respiratory causes, for this week (EG please can you deduplicate the figures, so that an accurate total of all deaths from ALL respiratory causes can be ascertained).
In other words, how many times, for week 42, have you recorded one death in both the 'all underlying respiratory disease' section AND in the Covid-19 section?
How many of the 670 COVID-19 deaths were laboratory confirmed positives?
If you cannot answer this, can you confirm if you are now including non-laboratory confirmed deaths in your statistics for COVID-19?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry
The "Deaths where the underlying cause was respiratory disease" category includes all deaths where an International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) code between J00 was J99 were the underlying cause of death. Where a death has a respiratory underlying cause (J00 to J99) but also has COVID-19 (U07.1 or U07.2) mentioned on the death certificate as a contributory cause, this death would be counted within both "Deaths where the underlying cause was respiratory disease" and "Deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate".
The information on exactly how many deaths were included in both categories would need to be created as bespoke analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information. Therefore, we consider this to be information not held.
On your query regarding laboratory confirmed deaths, we do not receive test results; our data are based on the cause of death provided by the medical professional (usually a doctor) who completed the death certificate.
Our definition of deaths involving COVID-19 includes where ICD-10 codes U07.1 (COVID-19, virus identified) or U07.2 (COVID-19, virus not identified) were mentioned anywhere on the death certificate (as the underlying cause of death or a contributory cause).
Therefore, not all of the deaths included in our statistics will be confirmed by a test. For example, the doctor certifying the death may have diagnosed COVID-19 based on symptoms. Information on deaths where COVID-19 was "suspected" (ICD-10 code U07.2, virus not identified) is available in Section 10 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis bulletin.
Of the 51,921 deaths due to COVID-19, 3,927 (7.6%) were classified as "suspected" COVID-19.
Of all the deaths involving COVID-19 registered between March and October 2020, "suspected" COVID-19 (ICD-10 code U07.2) was recorded on 7.9% (4,477 deaths).
More information on the process of death certification and coding of causes of death is available in our User guide to mortality statistics.