Deaths in the UK from COVID-19 rather than with COVID-19

You asked

FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2567

​How many people in the United Kingdom have died FROM sars-cov2/COVID-19? Not with COVID-19 but FROM?

We said

​Thank you for your enquiry.

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. Therefore, we do not hold the requested data for the whole of the UK. Should you wish to obtain this data from NRS and NISRA, they can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.

Our mortality statistics are derived from the information written on death certificates. The doctor or coroner certifying a death can record more than one health condition or event on the form. 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. For statistical purposes one of the health conditions on the certificate is chosen as the 'underlying cause of death'. The underlying cause of death is defined as the health condition or event that started the train of events leading to death and is worked out according to rules from the World Health Organisation (WHO). COVID-19 is the underlying cause of death in around 92% of deaths where it was mentioned on the death certificate.

If someone dies in circumstances involving an accident, violence or suspicious circumstances, the case is referred to a coroner for investigation. A post-mortem examination is carried out and usually an inquest is held. The Coroner's Court hears all the evidence and follows legal rules of evidence when deciding the causes of death. It is extremely unlikely that a coroner would find that someone was involved in a traffic accident, or was the victim of violence, because of having COVID-19 or a positive COVID-19 test – so they would not mention COVID-19 on the death certificate. This applies to any death caused by an accident, violence, poisoning, or other external causes.  Even if in an unusual case a death certificate mentioned both COVID-19 and a traffic accident (or other external causes), the World Health Organisation (WHO) rules for coding deaths mean that the traffic accident would be identified as the underlying cause of death in our data, not COVID-19.

You can read in detail about the coding of causes of death and identifying the underlying cause in the ONS User guide to mortality statistics and the WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) instruction manual.

In Figure 2 of the Deaths Registered weekly in England and Wales publication, using the download the data link you can see weekly figures of deaths involving COVID-19 and deaths due to COVID-19.  This information 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. 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.

If you would like to discuss any of the above statistics, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk