Number of deaths from COVID-19 from those admitted to hospital

You asked

Under the freedom of information act please provide the exact number of deaths from March 29th 2020 to January 20th 2021 that occured from Covid 19 only. This is patients who have been admitted to hospital with COVID-19 and consequently died from COVID-19.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with data showing which patients were admitted to hospital with COVID-19. ONS mortality data is derived from the death certificate, and whilst place of death is recorded, it does not record the reason for the admittance to hospital.

NHS Digital may be better placed to answer your enquiry. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.

COVID-19 deaths

When a person dies, in most cases a doctor writes a medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) which is then recorded in the death registration (at a local authority registration office). The details are printed out as the official 'death certificate' for the next of kin. The same information is sent electronically from the registration office to ONS for us to produce statistics about causes of death. For some deaths, such as when the death was due to an accident or violence, there is a coroner's inquest to establish the facts and the coroner then decides the cause of death and sends their findings to the local registrar.

The doctor or coroner certifying a death can record more than one health condition or event on the form. The medical certificate of cause of death has two parts, Part 1 contains the sequence of health conditions or events leading directly to death, while Part 2 can contain other health conditions that contributed to the death but were not part of the direct sequence. For statistical purposes one of the health conditions on the certificate is chosen as the 'underlying cause of death'. The underlying cause of death is defined as the health condition or event that started the train of events leading to death and is worked out according to rules from the World Health Organisation (WHO). COVID-19 is the underlying cause of death in around 92% of deaths where it was mentioned 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.

Weekly COVID-19 deaths are published as part of our Deaths Registered Weekly publication. We use the term "due to COVID-19" when referring only to deaths where that illness was recorded as the underlying cause of death. We use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had that illness mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.