You asked

FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2617

Could you please give me the number of deaths that were caused by Covid-19 within England and Wales that did not feature any other underlying causes on the death certificate that occurred between 1st March 2020 and present day. I would like the information to be broken down by age in 10 year increments (ie. 0-9 years, 10-19, 20-29, etc) and also by deaths per week.

We said

​​Thank you for your request.

Our mortality data are derived from the formal process of death registration.

Deaths from COVID-19 may include cases where the doctor completing the death certificate diagnosed possible cases of COVID-19, for example, where this was based on relevant symptoms but no test for the virus was conducted. Deaths with a positive test are coded using the ICD10 code U0.71 and those with suspected COVID-19 but no test has been conducted are coded with ICD10 U0.72.

We hold the following analysis showing deaths from COVID-19 by pre-existing condition broken down into two broad age-groups: Pre-existing conditions of people whose death was recorded with an underlying cause of COVID-19. This dataset can be found in section 8 of our Monthly mortality analysis bulletin. This dataset provides a greater insight into the leading pre-existing cause of death groups, for deaths occurring in England and Wales, in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 that were due to COVID-19.

Please see 'table 1a, row 28 (2020) and row 29 (2021)' for deaths where COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause, but had no other pre-existing conditions recorded on the death certificate, England and Wales split by age groups 1-64 and 65+. Table 1b represents these figures for England and table 1c figures are for Wales. This publication will be updated quarterly, with data for Q2 of 2021 due to be published at the end of July 2021.

There was a total of 9400 (0-64: 1549 / 65 and over: 7851) deaths in England and Wales 2020 and 6483 (0-64: 1560/ 65 and over: 4923) deaths registered in quarter 1 of 2021 that were due to COVID-19 and were recorded without any pre-existing conditions.

Unfortunatley, we do not hold analysis showing COVID-19 deaths with no pre-existing conditions split by 10-year age-band, as you have requested. To fulfil this request, 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.

If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.