Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of deaths due to medical conditions other than COVID-19 since 5 March.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have therefore asked the Authority to respond.

Dear Lord Kennedy,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made of the number of deaths due to medical conditions other than COVID-19 since 5 March (HL3543).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is responsible for publishing mortality statistics for deaths registered in England and Wales. The most recent figures published are for deaths registered in 2018[1], however we do publish provisional weekly deaths registrations, which are currently published for deaths registered up to 24 April 2020[2]. We have also published an article which contains detailed analysis of all deaths that occurred in England and Wales between 1 and 31 March 2020, registered up to 6 April 2020[3]. This includes data on underlying causes of death. Detailed analysis of all deaths that occurred in England and Wales between 1 and 30 April 2020 is due to be published in mid-May.

National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for publishing the number of deaths registered in Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively.

Cause of death is defined using the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th edition (ICD-10). Deaths caused by COVID-19 are identified by the ICD-10 codes U07.1 and U07.2.

Table 1 below provides the number of deaths by whether the underlying cause was COVID-19 or another medical condition, for deaths that occurred in England and Wales between 1 and 31 March 2020 registered up to 6 April 2020.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

Table 1: Number of deaths occurring in March 2020, where the underlying cause of death was COVID-19 or other causes, England and Wales[4][5][6]

[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsregisteredinenglandandwalesseriesdrreferencetables

[2]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending24april2020

[3]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinmarch2020

[4] Cause of death was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes. Codes used for COVID-19 are U07.1 and U07.2.

[5] Figures are for deaths that occurred between 1 and 31 March 2020 in England and Wales and were registered by 6 April 2020.

[6] More detail on the number of deaths broken down by leading cause groups (other than COVID-19) can be found in Table 1 of the dataset published alongside the article on Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales: March 2020.