COVID-19 deaths in Milton Keynes hospital

You asked

​How many people have died in Milton Keynes hospital from Covid 19 alone? As in they died only due to Covid 19.

We said

Thank you for your request.

Our mortality data are derived from the information presented on death certificates. Deaths from COVID-19 may include cases where the doctor completing the death certificate diagnosed possible cases of COVID-19, for example, where this was based on relevant symptoms but no test for the virus was conducted. This differs to the data published on the GOV.UK website, which are counts of all causes of death where a positive test for COVID-19 has been confirmed.  

We do not have access to data on when the test was conducted as this is not recorded on the death certificate. Deaths with a positive test are coded using the ICD-10 code U0.71 and those with suspected COVID-19 but no test has been conducted are coded with ICD-10 U0.72.

In order to provide information specifically for Milton Keynes General hospital, we would be required to create bespoke analysis, which we are not obligated to do under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000. Furthermore, if we were to create this dataset, we would be unable to disclose the information, as it would constitute personal information about a body corporate. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) makes it an offence to release personal information. Personal information is any information held by the UK Statistics Authority for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As disclosure of the requested information is prohibited by another enactment, Section 44 FOIA applies.

However, you may find the following information related to your request useful:

We have published the following publication: Death registrations and occurrences by local authority and health board. Mortality data is available for Milton Keynes here. In the tables labelled 'Registrations -- Pivot table' and 'Occurrences -- Pivot table', you can see how the mortality figures vary week on week, using the drop-down toggle and filtering on the week number and cause of death options.

For clarity: The filter/drop-down on the pivot tables for 'All-causes' does not contain COVID-19 deaths. By default, both options are ticked. If you were to untick the COVID-19 option it would deduct from the total deaths, leaving you with deaths from all other causes. Additionally, if both were ticked and you unticked All-causes, it would leave you with the total number of COVID-19 deaths.

Please see the table below taken from this pivot table, which provides the total number of COVID-19 deaths in all Milton Keynes hospitals below:

We also provide a facility via our Customise my data facility. Deaths can be filtered by week and location via this facility.

If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.