COVID-19 deaths of pregnant and perinatal women

You asked

Could you kindly provide me with COVID-19 related deaths for the January, February, March, and April 2020 period, please, for:

1. pregnant women O00–O99

2. perinatal associated deaths in COVID-19 (please supply age of deceased please) P00–P96

Some information was available in March 2020 summary under referencetablefortracker (seem unable to locate this again on your website although I have a copy)

for example: March 2020 data showed

It would be helpful for an expanded explanation of P00-P96.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Unfortunately, we do not hold the table you have requested.

A table with specific data criteria such as this would need to be created by our health data team. This would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime as we are not obliged to create datasets in order to respond to requests. Therefore, the information outlined in your request is not available.  

However, you may find the following information regarding pregnancy and mortality statistics and published datasets useful.

We have published an article and accompanying dataset 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. This dataset contains the table you are referring to, and can be downloaded via this link. This article and the dataset have since been updated to include deaths that occurred up until 30 April 2020, the data for which can be found here. These also include late registrations for deaths that occurred in March.

Table 1 of the first dataset linked above shows the number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in March 2020 by leading cause groupings, which includes deaths caused by COVID-19. The table shows there were 3,372 deaths where the underlying cause was COVID-19 in England and Wales in March 2020. Deaths for all other leading causes listed in this table (including ICD-10 codes O00-O99 and P00-P96) were not caused by COVID-19, and it cannot be identified from the table whether these deaths had a mention of COVID-19 as a contributory factor on the death certificate.

It is only possible to identify COVID-19 related deaths of pregnant women by identifying whether both pregnancy-related factors (O00-O99) and COVID-19 (U07.1 and UO7.2) were a contributory factor to the death, which means that both causes were mentioned anywhere on the death certificate. Data quality of death certificates is dependent on the correct identification and registration of cause, or causes of death by the medical practitioner.

If pregnancy was not a contributory factor to the death outlined by ICD-10 cause codes on the death certificate, it is not possible to confirm if a woman was pregnant at the time.  

The most recent weekly deaths bulletin for the week ending 15 May shows there were 2 deaths registered involving COVID-19 in the youngest age group (that is, those aged 1 year or under). The timeliness of the ONS weekly deaths bulletin means that data are provisional, and do not include late death registrations such as those pending coroner investigation. These provisional weekly death statistics are not revised and final death registration figures for 2020 will not be available until next year.

ONS is responsible for publishing mortality statistics for deaths registered in England and Wales. Our statistics are based on information recorded when deaths are certified and registered, usually by a medical practitioner. The most recent annual figures published are for deaths registered in 2018.

We also publish provisional weekly deaths registrations which are currently published for deaths registered up to 15 May 2020. These can be found here. The first death registered in England and Wales involving COVID-19 was registered in the week ending 13 March 2020.