"Long COVID" and "death being due to adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines" statistical data.

The request was successful.

Dear National Records of Scotland,

In the descriptive information to the NRS report ‘Deaths involving COVID-19 Week 19: 10-16 May 2021' on the NRS website it is stated:

Today’s monthly figures also show that post COVID-19 conditions, including “long COVID”, were mentioned on 11 death certificates in the period from March 2020 to April 2021.

In addition, three deaths in Scotland have been recorded with the underlying cause of death being due to adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines. This is in the context of 2.81 million people having been given at least one vaccine dose by 30 April 2021, according to statistics from Public Health Scotland.

As a Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 request please provide the following information recorded on NRS systems:

1. The date when the extraction of "Long COVID" information from death certificates, for the purposes of keeping statistical records, was initiated.

2. The date when the extraction of "underlying cause of death being due to adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines" information from death certificates, for the purposes of keeping statistical records, was initiated.

3. The full list of descriptors that are used to describe deaths associated to "long COVID" i.e. the list of descriptors that the NRS uses for associating data/records/statistics to.

4. The full list of descriptors that are used to describe deaths associated with COVID-19 vaccines i.e. the list of descriptors that the NRS uses for associating data/records/statistics to.

To expand on the request 4 such that the NRS is clear on what is being asked for the response by the NRS to request FoI/202100224430, that is in the public domain on the WhatDoTheyKnow platform, states the following:

We do however hold figures on deaths where ‘COVID-19 vaccines causing adverse effects in therapeutic use, unspecified’ was mentioned on the death certificate. Please see Table 12 in our monthly COVID-19 report.

It would reasonably be anticipated that there would be a field in the death certificate that would allow the doctor signing the certificate to state that a COVID-19 vaccine could be involved in the causing the death of the person. Such a descriptor being used for "deaths involving COVID- vaccines" would be expected given that "deaths involving COVID-19" are captured in the statistical data released by the NRS and therefore, logically, it would be expected that "deaths involving COVID-19 vaccines" would also be recorded.

Nothing in this FOISA 2002 should be interpreted as being negative towards the NRS. This requester understands that the NRS just collates the information that is available to the NRS. This FOI request should not be regarded as "shooting the messenger" rather simply asking the messenger to reveal what it is able to release from death certificates. The response to request 4 is hoped to reveal all of the descriptors used that are associated with a death recorded by a doctor where that doctor believes or knows that a COVID-19 vaccine was implicated in that death.

This request will obviously give the information from which further FOISA 2002 requests could be made and to avoid requesters burdening the NRS by asking for recorded information that does not exist.

Thanks for your response.

Yours faithfully,

J Grove

National Records of Scotland

Dear J Grove,

Thank you for your request dated 09 September 2021 under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) requesting information regarding the use of Long COVID and Adverse COVID Vaccine Effects Death Causes in our publications.

We received your request on 09 September 2021 and will respond in accordance with FOISA by 07 October 2021.

If you have any queries, please contact the NRS FOI Team quoting case number 202100238139.

NRS FOI Team
09 September 2021

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National Records of Scotland

1 Attachment

Dear J Grove,

Please find attached the response from National Records of Scotland to your recent Freedom of Information request.

Regards,

NRS FOI Team
17 September 2021

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J Roberts left an annotation ()

Letter from Professor Sir Ian Diamond (National Statistician) to Andrew Bridgen MP - 25/1/23

'The latest edition of the Deaths involving COVID-19 by Vaccination status bulletin1 and dataset2 was published on 6 July 2022 and included data up to 31 May 2022. We have not stopped this publication, but we paused publication of subsequent releases, which had been at that point published every two months, in order to make updates to the underlying data. These updates will enable publication of mortality rates for spring and autumn booster doses and enable the rates to be calculated using data on a larger proportion of the population. There is a notice on the bulletin1 and dataset2 web pages to explain this, which reads...

The next release of this publication is planned for 21 February 2023 and will include data up to 31 December 2022. We intend to publish data for January 2023 and subsequent months in future publications in spring 2023, with no date currently finalised.'

https://qna.files.parliament.uk/qna-atta...