You asked
Is it possible for you to provide monthly figures, of numbers of people who have died in Wales and separately how many have died in England, from only Covid-19 symptoms in 2020?
I can only find death figures of people who have been recorded as having Covid-19 in the 28 days before they died.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
In order to provide a monthly breakdown of figures for COVID-19 deaths with no pre-existing conditions for England and Wales separately, 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, Row 21 of the tab named 'Table 7c' of the following dataset, Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales, provides deaths figures from COVID-19 in Wales with no pre-existing conditions between March and June 2020. Row 24 of the tab named 'Table 7b' provides death figures from COVID-19 in England with no pre-existing conditions. However, unfortunately, these are not broken down by month.
We are currently reassessing this publication and will be releasing an update in the future analysing data from July onwards. The final release date will be announced on our Release Calendar.
Our mortality statistics are derived from the information about the cause of death provided on the death certificate. 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.
Our data are therefore different from the figures on COVID-19 deaths published on the government's COVID-19 dashboard which shows 'deaths within 28 days of a positive test'. You can read a blog by Professor John Newton of Public Health England about the complexities of counting COVID-19 deaths and the different methods used.