You asked
I am wanting to know why figures reported for Coronavirus are not being portrayed accurately in the media. The death rate had not increased and reported figures in the ONS are including those suspected to have died of coronavirus in their reports, and only where it is mentioned.
Why are we not being shown figures of those in category U07.1 and U07.2 (emergency coronavirus death codes) with the first being recorded as cause of death that has been tested and proven, the second being just presumed, no test.
I would like to have a freedom of information request but not sure who would be responsible for this break down.
At the moment I am satisfied with a week by week split of the two codes so we can see who has died actually tested positive. Even though these figures are flawed as testing positive for something doesn't mean it is the cause of death.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for publishing mortality statistics for deaths registered in England and Wales, using the information supplied on the death certificate.
Where there was a positive test result, or the certifying doctor was satisfied that the disease was COVID-19 based on symptoms or clinical findings, we record the ICD-10 code U07.1
If the doctor was not certain of the diagnosis, they can write "suspected COVID-19" or "possible COVID-19" and we record the ICD-10 code U07.2
On 16 April, we released a more in-depth analysis on COVID-19, which will hopefully answer some of your questions. Within this we are hoping to include the leading causes of death in the month of March, different underlying causes of death and mentions of suspected COVID-19 (U07.2).
This is available here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/analysisofdeathsinvolvingcovid19
When we look at the most recent weekly publication it is evident that in the week ending 3 April 2020, the number of deaths increased to 16,387. This is 6,082 more deaths than the five-year average of 10,305 and the highest number of weekly death registrations since week 2 (early Jan) 2000. In line with this we are seeing an increase in death registrations involving coronavirus (COVID-19).
If you would like to request data, as a bespoke analysis, any such analysis would be outside of the Freedom of Information regime and would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreement of costs where appropriate. If this is something you would be interested in, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk so that we may discuss your enquiry further. There would be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.