133 Molesworth Street
PO Box 5013
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
T+64 4 496 2000
16 August 2022
Lisa Riley
By email:
[FYI request #18452 email]
Ref:
H202207087/ OMB 574836
Cc: [email address]
Kia ora Lisa
Reconsideration of your request for official information
I refer to your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) to Manatū Hauora
Ministry of Health (Manatū Hauora) on 5 February 2022. You requested:
“Please provide the following information on the cases that you have reported as being in
hospital, in ICU or being a death with COVID-19 for the entire pandemic period.
Specifically, please provide the total number of cases for the age groups used in your
reports, the percentage of these who were admitted to hospital or ICU because of COVID
complications, the percentage who were admitted for other reasons but tested positive.
Please do the same for the deaths that have unfortunately occurred and been recorded as
a COVID death.”
On the same day, Manatū Hauora communicated a decision on your request and stated the
Ministry was updating its process on reporting COVID-19 deaths, comorbidities and
demographic details, and that the website would be soon updated.
Due to the adoption of new confidentiality methods, described below, the Ministry can now
release data that was previously protected due to privacy concerns.
The figures we present on our web pages are only for hospitalisations and deaths where
COVID-19 was part of the reason for hospitalisation or death. We attempt to exclude
hospitalisations and deaths of people who had COVID-19 but who COVID-19 infections were
unrelated to their hospitalisation or death.
Please see below table 1 with a breakdown of cases, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and
deaths (where COVID-19 was the underlying cause or a contributory cause) by age group.
Table 1: COVID-19 Statistics as of 2 February 2022 in 10 year age bands
Age Band
Cases
Hospitalisations
ICU Care
Deaths
Count
Type
0 to 9
168,126
1,455
27
.s
FRR3
10 to 19
243,543
435
12
.s
FRR3
20 to 29
285,318
654
9
.s
FRR3
30 to 39
281,439
786
30
6
FRR3
40 to 49
236,544
807
42
15
FRR3
50 to 59
191,577
1,152
81
60
FRR3
60 to 69
124,317
1,404
78
123
FRR3
70 to 79
64,347
1,680
63
312
FRR3
80 to 89
27,057
1,761
30
558
FRR3
90+
6,975
600
.s
480
FRR3
Unknown
51
.s
.s
.s
FRR3
Confidentiality methods:
To avoid revealing sensitive information about potentially identifiable individuals in our data, we
apply two data confidentiality methods, perturbation and suppression, to any data that is not
already released as exact counts on the Manatū Hauora website.
Perturbation is the adding of random noise to data, for example, rounding up or rounding down,
and suppression is not providing data, where doing so could compromise confidentiality.
For data that is not already provided exactly on the website:
• All values between 1 and 5 are suppressed.
• Zero values are provided exactly, except for in sensitive categories where a zero
value
may be suppressed to protect other low values.
• Values of 6 and above are perturbed using fixed random rounding to base 3 (FRR3).
This entails rounding values to neighbouring multiples of 3. For example, 11 may be
rounded to 12 or 9.
FRR3 is a best-practice confidentiality method recommended by Stats NZ. More information
about this is available at:
www.data.govt.nz/toolkit/privacy-and-security/understanding-data-
confidentiality/data-confidentiality-principles-and-methods-report/.
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Examples:
True value Displayed value
4
.s (suppressed)
11
9 or 12
15
15
16
15 or 18
301
300 or 303
Thank you for your patience while we reconsidered your request. I hope this assists
with your complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman.
Nāku noa, nā
Gill Hall
Group Leader, Intelligence, Surveillance and Knowledge
Public Health Agency, Ministry of Health
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