Causes of Death for 2020 (FOI)

Request

Can you please release the end of year causes of death for 2020.

Response

The mortality statistics for Jersey, are derived from information collected from the death certificate at death registration.

All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:

a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or

b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury

It is not possible to provide a full breakdown of the number of people who died during the period March 2020 to February 2021 until sufficient time has passed after the end of the year to allow the cause of death data to be finalised and coded and independently reviewed by clinical experts at the Office of National Statistics (ONS). This includes classification and coding of each individual death, with some standardisation to the causes, as there are instances where there are different terms used that broadly refer to the same thing, eg., “Stroke” and “Cerebral Accident”.

A breakdown of mortality data for 2020 is expected to be available in our annual death’s publication, which is provisionally scheduled to be released in Summer 2021.