You asked
4 days ago the BBC published an article citing your stats and stating: Teachers 'not at higher risk' of death than average.
Please can you :
a) Provide the data for deaths and infection cases from September 2020 to December 2020 (this should be possible as the data set from you used in the BBC article is from March 2020-December 2020.
b) Explain why your original data set published was from March - December 2020 when during that time period schools in England were only open fully for approx 12 weeks (Sep-Dec)?
c) Provide data on the risk of death from C19 for female teachers in secondary sector?
d) Provide data on the risks for teachers of long covid compared to other professions?
We said
Thank you for your request.
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. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
Occupations are defined using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010). Definitions of all groups and individual occupations can be found here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/standardoccupationalclassificationsoc/soc2010/soc2010volume1structureanddescriptionsofunitgroups
a) The COVID-19 Infection Survey is a representative household survey which estimates the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in the community, with or without symptoms. The survey has been running in England since 26 April 2020 and now includes data from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland as well.
In the dataset accompanying our weekly bulletin, you can find the official reported estimates of the percentage of people testing positive in England over the study period on tab 1a.
In the response to the pandemic ONS have produced Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by occupation, England and Wales, this publication provides an insight into deaths involving COVID-19 by different occupational groups.
In order to provide information on infections in smaller time series, we would need to create bespoke analysis, which we are not obligated to do under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We therefore consider this to be information not held. Bespoke services will be available to order once mortality data for 2020 have been finalised in the Summer of 2021. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contacthealth.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.
b) The dataset represents provisional counts of deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by occupational groups during the pandemic. The analysis is not solely focussed on Teaching occupations. These deaths are coded using the information supplied on the death certificate in line with Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010) as mentioned above. However, due to public interest, ONS produced a separate table with breakdowns for deaths in Teaching and Educational occupations in table 8. We are unable to produce teacher deaths during the period of September to December without producing bespoke analysis. As stated above, custom outputs will be available to order following completion of the 2020 mortality dataset.
c) Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with data on risk of death by COVID-19 by occupation as we do not hold this analysis. However, teaching occupation deaths involving COVID-19, is aggregated by sex in table 8.
d) As stated in "Request C", we do not hold risk analysis. Here is a link to existing analysis which looks at the Prevalence of long COVID symptoms and COVID-19 complications, but this is not split by occupation. Therefore, we would consider data on long covid by occupation as information not held.
If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.