COVID-19 with no underlying conditions by age-band from December 2020 to present

You asked

Could you please inform me of how many deaths were caused solely by Covid-19 from December 2020 through to December 2021 in England.

These deaths should include people that have died solely from Covid-19, and nothing else and also excluding deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

If possible, could you please supply this information also by age groups, I.e 0-10, 10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60, 60-70, 70-80, 80-90 and 90+ years of age.

We said

​Thank you for your enquiry.

In order to provide COVID-19 deaths by underlying cause and specific age-bands from December 2020 to present, we would need to create bespoke analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.

However, you may find the following information related to your request useful:

Ours and Public Health England's (PHE) COVID-19 deaths data differ and have different purposes:

• The daily COVID-19 deaths counts reported on the government's COVID-19 dashboard (produced by PHE) shows deaths within 28 days of a first positive laboratory-confirmed test.
• ONS weekly death registrations data for England and Wales, relate to the week that ended 11 days prior and are based on the cause of death reported on the death certificate, thereby not restricted to only deaths that showed a positive test.

We 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".

This publication had been 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.

Figure 2 of the following publication Deaths Registered Weekly in England and Wales provides weekly figures showing deaths both due to and involving COVID-19 and deaths.

This includes data from Week 1 of 2020 to 22 January (week 3) 2021, which is the latest data available. This publication is updated every Tuesday.

We use the term "due to COVID-19" when referring only to deaths where that illness was recorded as the underlying cause of death, which is when it is either the only health condition mentioned on the death certificate, or it was the one that started the train of events leading to death.

We use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had that illness mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.

Within the Deaths Registered weekly publication, we do publish deaths involving COVID-19 deaths with 5-year age band. We use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had that illness mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or a contributory cause.