You asked
Could I request the recovery rate of people catching COVID-19 in The U.K.
Could I also request the amount of people who died OF COVID-19 in England and Wales
We said
Thank you for your request.
COVID-19 Recovery rates:
The COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) is a representative household survey which tracks COVID-19 infection and immunity in the community. In this instance, community refers to private residential households and excludes institutional settings such as hospitals and care homes. We estimate the percentage of people who would have tested positive for COVID-19 at a point in time in the population by testing a representative sample of people in the UK. Participants are swabbed every week for the first 5 weeks and then every month thereafter. A sample of these participants will also have their blood tested for antibodies to COVID-19.
We do not currently hold data on recovery rates directly. We are working on producing analysis which will be published as soon as available on clearance times. This analysis will provide insight into the time taken for people to swab negative on an RT-PCR test after having initially tested positive and can be a useful indication of the timeline of the infection.
You may also wish to ask The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Public Health England (PHE) to see if they can assist with any further data regarding this. They can be contacted via the following contact form and email address respectively: DHSC FOI Contact Form and wn_coronavirus@phe.gov.uk.
COVID-19 Deaths by underlying cause:
ONS data as described here are different from the figures on COVID-19 deaths published on the government's COVID-19 dashboard which shows 'deaths within 28 days of a positive test'. You can read a blog by Professor John Newton of Public Health England about the complexities of counting COVID-19 deaths and the different methods used.
Figure 2 of our Deaths registered weekly bulletin shows the number of deaths due to COVID-19 and the number of deaths involving COVID-19 with "due to" referring only to deaths where COVID-19 was recorded as the underlying cause of death and "involving" referring to deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.
Please see the 'download data' option at the bottom of Figure 2.
Here are the summed totals for COVID-19 from 3rd January 2020 to week ending 30 April 2021
Deaths involving COVID-19 (underlying or contributory cause): 137,885
Deaths due to COVID-19 (underlying cause): 123,379