COVID-19 Accounts for 1 Percent of Child Deaths in England and Wales in 2020

Undated photo A child being given a Covid-19 test Danny Lawson/PA

Eleven children aged between 28 days and 15 years died from COVID-19 in England and Wales in 2020, official figures show.

The report published on Thursday by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), which analysed child and infant mortality in England and Wales in 2020, said the year had seen the lowest numbers of infant and child deaths since records began in 1980.

Young people aged 16 and over are out of the scope of this report.

The report said that “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)” was the underlying cause of death of 11 children aged between 28 days and 15 years. It was also mentioned on the death certificate of two other children.

These deaths account for 1 percent of deaths of children in this age group that occurred in 2020, the report said.

It added that the main causes of death in this age group continued to be congenital malformations, deformations, and chromosomal abnormalities.

According to The Epoch Times’ analysis of official data, there were an estimated 11.3 million children aged 15 and under in England and Wales in 2020, meaning less than one in a million children died of COVID-19—the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

A separate ONS data set published earlier showed that seven children aged 15 and younger died due to COVID 19 in England and Wales in 2020, including one 5-year-old, two 10-year-olds, one 11-year-old, one 12-year-old, and two 15-year-olds.

The ONS said the new data set captured a fuller picture due to long delays in registration during the pandemic.

Neither of the two data sets broke down the deaths by comorbidities.

According to a study published in Nature Medicine journal in November 2021, between March 2020 and February 2021, 25 children aged 18 and under in England died due to the CCP virus (two per million). Among the 25, six appeared to have no underlying health conditions, including two who died of paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome, which has been temporally associated with the CCP virus.

Regarding overall child and infant mortality in England and Wales, the ONS said there were 2,226 infant deaths (aged under one year) and 789 child deaths (aged 1 to 15 years) in total in the year 2020—both the lowest numbers since records began in 1980.

It also said the infant mortality rate (3.6 deaths per 1,000 live births) and the neonatal mortality rate (2.7 deaths per 1,000 live births) remained fairly stable in the past few years. Neonatal mortality is defined as deaths that occurred within 28 dates after birth.