COVID-19 deaths occupations
Dear National Records of Scotland,
1- Can you tell me how many teachers (within primary and secondary schools) have died from COVID-19 in Scotland from March 2020 till Oct 2022 ?
2- Can you tell me how many shop workers have died from COVID-19 in Scotland from March 2020 till Oct 2022 ?
3- Can you tell me how many police officers have died from COVID-19 in Scotland from March 2020 till oct 2022 ?
4- Can you tell me how many care home workers have died from COVID-19 in Scotland from March 2020 till Oct 2022 ?
If you also could seperate any deaths registered by year and month that would be appreciated.
Yours faithfully,
Mr D Tait
Dear Mr D Tait
Thank you for your request dated 1 November 2022 under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) requesting information on COVID-19 deaths by occupation.
We received your request on 1 November 2022 and will respond in accordance with FOISA by 29 November 2022.
If you have any queries, please contact the NRS FOI Team quoting case number FOI/202200328178.
NRS FOI Team
2 November 2022
Please see below a correction to the acknowledgement in this case. As 25 November 2022 is a non-working day under FOISA it should read as follows:
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Dear Mr D Tait
Thank you for your request dated 1 November 2022 under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) requesting information on COVID-19 deaths by occupation.
We received your request on 1 November 2022 and will respond in accordance with FOISA by 30 November 2022.
If you have any queries, please contact the NRS FOI Team quoting case number FOI/202200328178.
NRS FOI Team
2 November 2022
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Dear Mr D Tait,
Please find attached the response from National Records of Scotland to your recent Freedom of Information request.
Regards,
NRS FOI Team
29 November 2022
Dear National Records of Scotland,
Can you tell me the total amount of COVID-19 deaths from dates prior stated for the following ?
''For example, code 6145 covers care workers and home carers.''
Yours faithfully,
David
Dear David,
Thank you for your request dated 29 November 2022 under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) requesting COVID Deaths regarding code 6145.
We received your request on 29 November 2022 and will respond in accordance with FOISA by 30 December 2022.
If you have any queries, please contact the NRS FOI Team quoting case number REF: 202200332258.
NRS FOI Team
29 November 2022
Dear David Tait,
Please find attached the response from National Records of Scotland to your recent Freedom of Information request.
Regards,
NRS FOI Team
20 December 2022
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for fulfilling my request in full. I will now close this case.
Merry x-mas !
David
Dear D Tait,
We have discovered an error in an FOI response that we sent to you late last year (FOI 202200328178). You asked for the number of teachers, shop workers, police officers and care home workers who have died from COVID-19 in Scotland from March 2020 till Oct 2022. We responded that there were no deaths for teachers, shop workers and police officers between the ages of 20-64 and who were not retired during this period. We have since discovered an error in the code we wrote to produce these figures and can now confirm that the numbers are as follows:
Deaths involving COVID-19 of specified occupations, aged 20-64 and not retired, March 2020 to October 2022
Teachers (SOC2010 codes 2314, 2315, 2319) 17 deaths
Shop Workers (SOC2010 codes 7111, 7112) 67 deaths
Police Officers (SOC2010 code 3312) 7 deaths
Due to the demand for these statistics, and we are going to provide a detailed breakdown of occupations in our 2022 annual COVID-19 deaths publication, released on 18 July.
We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused you.
Best,
Daniel Burns
Hi Daniel,
Many thanks for the clarification. Could you explain in more detail about these errors.
What went wrong and how this was discovered ?
Yours faithfully,
David
Dear D Tait,
We noticed that our code had an error in it, which was causing the results
produced to be incorrect. NRS was looking into this because someone had
asked a question disputing the results of an FOI response we published
online.
In hindsight, we realise that we should have provided a different response
to your original request as the information you had requested is exempt
under section 17 of FOISA (information not held). We did not hold the
information you requested as we had not published it at that level of
detail and in order to answer your request, we needed to write bespoke
code to create the information which you requested. The Scottish
Information Commissioner’s briefing
([1]BriefingSection17Informationnotheld.pdf (itspublicknowledge.info),
paragraph 46 states: “Public authorities are not required to create
information in order to answer a request. There’s a distinction between
creating new information, and compiling information. Where a request can
be answered by compiling information from readily-available resources held
by the public authority, this is not the same as creating new information.
However, if collation of the information would require skill and complex
judgement, the information is not held.”
We try, as always, to be as helpful as possible and to answer the many
requests we get on top of the other work we do, but it is important that
any data that goes out in response to an FOI request is quality assured to
the same degree as our National Statistics publications. With the volume
of requests we are receiving, we are unable to provide the level of
quality assurance which is necessary if we are frequently having to carry
out bespoke analysis to answer numerous FOI requests. We will therefore be
following the Scottish Commissioner’s guidance more closely in future, in
order to reduce the risk of error in our responses. As I noted in my
previous email, where we recognise that there is high user demand for
certain analyses, we try to include these in our published statistical
reports so that they are available for users. This is why we will be
including a more detailed breakdown of occupations in our annual COVID
publication on 18 July.
I hope the above explanation answers your question.
Best,
Daniel Burns
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the response. I'm really none the wiser though as to how the initial results i received were wrong though other than you said ''We noticed that our code had an error in it, which was causing the results produced to be incorrect.''
Could you be more specific as to how the error was spotted and what was wrong with the initial coding ? I am curious that after 3 years into the pandemic 91 COVID deaths were suddenly added to 3 occupational categories when prior results stated there were none.
Could you also elaborate on ''NRS was looking into this because someone had asked a question disputing the results of an FOI response we published online.''
What was the FOI in dispute, the particular question and from whom ?
Hope you can help some more.
Yours sincerely,
David
Hi David,
This is quite technical, but I'm including it because you have specifically asked for it. To extract this data from our database we need to write code. We use SAS programming language to do this. In the program we wrote we asked it to select only deaths where the cause of death was COVID, but we failed to include a statement to tell it to keep the variable which holds cause of death. As such the program was failing to pick up any deaths.
We wrote a specific piece of code to answer your query, because we had not produced these figures before. This is a different code from the one we used to look at deaths by occupation that was included in the monthly COVID-19 report (which reports at a less detailed level of occupation group). This code was always correct, and the 91 deaths you refer to were always included in those numbers. Nothing new has been added, those deaths have been counted since the beginning.
NRS received a request from a member of the public with a screenshot of the FOI in question, saying they had found it online. They questioned its accuracy so we went back to the code we'd used to answer your query and checked it again. We found that there had been a mistake so we got in touch with you to inform you about this. We cannot give out details of individuals who get in touch with us, as I am sure you understand.
Regards,
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
That is very much appreciated. I'm still struggling to understand where you went wrong as you did ask specifically on COVID deaths and were returned with none.
eg- ''we asked it to select only deaths where the cause of death was COVID''
You then said: ''but we failed to include a statement to tell it to keep the variable which holds cause of death''
Can you elaborate more on this statement/variable ? So as i understand it, you did input correctly on the amount of COVID deaths but not this variable which holds cause of death and that then detected the COVID deaths that were prior missing.
What was the date this occured ?
''NRS received a request from a member of the public with a screenshot of the FOI in question, saying they had found it online''
I know this is quite technical and challenging to explain but i had wrote an article on this FOIA so i want to be really clear when i publish an update.
Your sincerely,
Mr David Tait
Dear Mr Tait,
We have explained as best we can why this happened and have put procedures in place to make sure this kind of thing does not happen again. The full list of deaths involving COVID-19 by occupation will be published on 18 July 2023.
Regards,
Daniel Burns
Dear National Records of Scotland,
Ok, thanks Daniel. Disappointed you could not answer my follow up questions.
Yours faithfully,
David
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