Coronavirus: Death
(asked on 27th October 2021) - View Source
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of those who died with COVID-19 in each of the last 20 weeks had received no vaccination against the disease.
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have, therefore, asked the Authority to respond.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond | National Statistician
Lord Marlesford
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
4 November 2021
Dear Lord Marlesford,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what percentage of those who died with COVID-19 in each of the last 20 weeks had received no vaccination against the disease (HL3492).
The data requested is provided, for England, in Table 1, using the most recent data we have available. Information on vaccination status is not included on the death certificate. It is obtained by linkage to the vaccination data from the National immunisation Management Service (NIMS) produced by NHS-E. While the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, we do not hold similar data for Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Please note that the numbers of deaths of unvaccinated persons will depend on the changing number of people who are unvaccinated and the changing characteristics of unvaccinated people, which vary due to the selective vaccination roll-out and differences in uptake.
To compare the risk of death in unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals, we advise using the age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) for deaths involving COVID-19 for unvaccinated persons and for other vaccination statuses in our publication “Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England: deaths occurring between 2 January and 24 September 2021” [1]. These take into account the changing size and age structure of the populations with different vaccination status. This data is for England only and covers approximately 86% of all deaths.These ASMRs show that the risk of death involving COVID-19 is much lower in fully vaccinated than in unvaccinated people.
Please note, other factors such as the health of the people who are unvaccinated may differ from the vaccinated population and change over time, which will affect the age-standardised mortality rates.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond