FOI Ref: FOI/2023/4762
you asked
1. Please confirm if ONS stopped publishing COVID-19 and all cause mortality deaths by vaccination status in July 2022 and if so why?
2. I'd like to please request a breakdown showing excess deaths by 'ever vaccinated' Vs 'never vaccinated' since the UK COVID-19 19 vaccine roll out to date.
3. I understand many 'vaccinated' are being incorrectly counted by ONS as 'unvaccinated' for a time period after vaccination. Can you confirm reasoning for classifying those vaccinated as unvaccinated?
Due to point 3, I'd like to compare 'all cause mortality' by those who have and have not ever had a vaccine.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Our Deaths by vaccination status, England publication has not been discontinued.
We are currently updating the publication to use 2021 Census data.
The previous publications used Census 2011 data. This only covers 79% of the population because the rates are derived for the cohort of people enumerated at 2011 Census who were registered with a General Practitioner at the beginning of the pandemic and who were alive at the beginning of the month of interest.
Using Census 2021 data, we can be representative of a much larger proportion of the population including people who migrated since the 2011 Census and people too young to be included in the 2011 Census.
Deaths by vaccination status in the United Kingdom
We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. NRS and NISRA can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
Unfortunately, we also cannot supply "Excess deaths" by vaccination status, as we calculate excess deaths against the five-year average. As the current vaccination programme was launched in December 2020, we do not have sufficient data to calculate against. Further information on the calculation of excess deaths is available in our blog Understanding excess deaths during a pandemic.
We do hold the following analysis: Deaths by vaccination status, England. This analysis looks at deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), non-COVID-19 deaths and all deaths by vaccination status, broken down by age group. The data in this publication are for England only. Vaccinations data for Wales is not yet available to be linked to the mortality dataset and the Public Health Data Asset (PHDA) which covers England only. Therefore, the data requested for Wales is not held.
Table 7 in Deaths by vaccination status, England provides whole period counts of all registered deaths by vaccination status by age group; for all deaths and deaths involving COVID-19, deaths occurring between 1 January 2021 and 31 May 2022 by the following definitions. The first COVID-19 vaccine in England was administered on 8 December 2020, we did not include the last few weeks of December 2020 as so few people would have been vaccinated. In addition, our publication looks at whole month periods.
The next publication, using Census 2021 data and will include deaths registered in June 2022 to December 2022 data. This publication is scheduled for release on 21February 2023.
If you would like to discuss further, please contact the Health Analysis and Pandemic Insight Customer Services Team at Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.