FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3548
You asked
Exactly how many people in the UK (stratified by age groups), without underlying co- morbidities, have died of Covid-19 from March 2020 - Jan 2022?
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and 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.
The medical certificate of cause of death has two parts, Part 1 contains the sequence of health conditions or events leading directly to death, while Part 2 can contain other health conditions that contributed to the death but were not part of the direct sequence. Deaths due to COVID-19 usually have COVID-19 mentioned in Part 1 and may have consequences of COVID-19, such as pneumonia, mentioned in lines above. The presence of conditions listed as consequences of COVID-19 are not underlying conditions and are not counted in our method to describe pre-existing conditions mentioned in deaths due to COVID-19.
We define pre-existing conditions as those mentioned in Part 2 of the medical certificate of cause of death. If COVID-19 is mentioned in Part 1 on lines above other conditions also mentioned in Part 1, the last condition mentioned in Part 1 is also considered a pre-existing condition. We don't know exactly how many people who died from COVID-19 had no pre-existing health conditions, only how many did not have a pre-existing condition mentioned on the death certificate. A contributor to the cause of death is expected to have increased the likelihood of death, but this does not mean that the death would have been avoided in its absence.
We would also recommend reading our recent blog on this subject: To say only 17,000 people have died from COVID-19 is highly misleading | National Statistical (ons.gov.uk)
We hold analysis showing deaths due to COVID-19 with no pre-existing conditions by broad age-band in England and Wales in the following publication: Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics. This is published quarterly within the Monthly Mortality Analysis publication:
Data is available from January to December 2021. Quarter 1 of 2022 will be published in April 2022.
For further information please contact Health.data@ons.gov.uk.