133 Molesworth Street
PO Box 5013
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
T+64 4 496 2000
15 August 2022
Mark Shelly
By email: [FYI request #19415 email]
Ref: H202206707
Tēnā koe Mark
Response to your request for official information
Thank you for your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) to Manatū Hauora
(the Ministry of Health) on 20 May 2022 for information regarding COVID-19 deaths and
hospitalisations. Each part of your request is responded to below.
1. What number of total deaths in any category would be great enough for the Ministry to
Please give vaccination status breakdown (unvaccinated, one shot, two shots, boosted,
unknown) across the total number of deaths where Covid-19 has been officially recorded
as the underlying cause.
2. What number of deaths in any category would be great enough for the MoH to provide
a vaccination status breakdown without being concerned that the data may potentially
harm patient’s privacy?
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 Ministry’s website.
Perturbation is the adding of random noise to data 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 (represented by ‘.s’).
•
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).
FRR3 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 is
available at:
www.data.govt.nz/toolkit/privacy-and-security/understanding-data-
confidentiality/data-confidentiality-principles-and-methods-report/.
3. Please provide the vaccination status data for each age category where the number of
deaths exceeds the threshold asked for in question 2 above.
Please refer to the table overleaf.
Age
No doses
Partially
Fully
Received
Total
group
received prior
vaccinated
vaccinated at
booster at least
to being
least 7 days
7 days before
reported as a
before reported
being reported
case
as a case
as a case
0 to 59
18
.s
12
12
45
60 to 69
18
.s
18
33
72
70 to 79
33
.s
39
108
183
80 to 89
48
9
57
237
348
90+
48
9
30
219
306
Total
168
27
156
606
957
4. What was the average age at time of death for each age group?
Please refer to the table below.
Age group
Average age at
time of death
0 to 59
51
60 to 69
65
70 to 79
75
80 to 89
85
90+
94
5. What was the average age at time of death for the total number of deaths to date for
which Covid-19 has been identified as the underlying cause?
83 years old.
6. How many of those who have died and for which Covid-19 has been identified as the
underlying cause were admitted to ICU prior to dying? How many of these were admitted
to ICU because of Covid-19 symptoms and not for other reasons? Please provide this
data broken down into age groups if possible.
39 people were admitted to ICU, 36 of these were admitted for COVID-19 symptoms. A
breakdown by age groups is withheld under section 9(2)(a) of the Act.
7. For deaths where Covid-19 was identified as the underlying cause, how many occurred
in each calendar month (from March 2020 until now)?
Please refer to the table overleaf.
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Month starting
Count
1 March 2020
.s
1 April 2020
18
1 May 2020
.s
1 September 2020
.s
1 February 2021
.s
1 September 2021
.s
1 October 2021
.s
1 November 2021
6
1 December 2021
.s
1 January 2022
.s
1 February 2022
12
1 March 2022
180
1 April 2022
180
1 May 2022
138
1 June 2022
159
1 July 2022
246
Total
957
8. Covid Symptoms: For each age group, how many of those admitted to ICU were
admitted because of Covid-19 symptoms and not for some other reason?
The information requested in this part of your request is publicly available on our website.
Please refer to the data at:
www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-
statistics/covid-19-case-demographics. Only cases admitted to ICU because of COVID-19
symptoms are included in this data.
9. How many people within each age group that were admitted to ICU because of Covid-
19 symptoms, subsequently died with Covid recorded as the underlying cause of death?
Please refer to the response to part 6 of your request.
10. Of those that were admitted to ICU and subsequently died, for how many in each age
group was Covid-19 the underlying cause?
Please refer to the table below.
Age group
Contributory/Not Underlying
Total
COVID/Not
available
0 to 59
12
18
27
60 to 69
.s
15
18
70 to 79
6
6
12
80 to 89
.s
.s
.s
Total
27
36
63
11. Of those admitted to ICU, what was the vaccination status at time of being admitted?
a. How many people in each group were unvaccinated at the time of admittance.
b. How many people in each group had received one shot prior to admittance.
c. How many people in each group had received two shots prior to admittance.
d. How many people in each group had received two shots plus prior to admittance.
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This part of your request is refused under section 18(g) of the Act, as the information is not held
by Manatū Hauora. Vaccination status at the time of admission cannot be calculated as
information about the time someone was admitted to ICU is not held by Manatū Hauora.
Information about vaccination status at the time someone tested positive for COVID-19 for all
people who were admitted to ICU is available at:
www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-
coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics.
12. When did they get admitted?
As stated previously, time of admission to ICU is not held by Manatū Hauora. Manatū Hauora
only holds information about whether someone was admitted to ICU, and the date they were
admitted to hospital in general.
13. How many people in each age group were in hospital and in ICU in any given month
(list months in which people in the table were in hospital and in ICU and advise how many
people in each age group were in hospital with Covid in each of those months and how
many of those were in in ICU).
Please refer to the tables below and overleaf.
COVID-19 case
Count
hospital admissions
by month starting
1 February 2020
.s
1 March 2020
24
1 April 2020
24
1 May 2020
.s
1 June 2020
.s
1 July 2020
.s
1 August 2020
12
1 September 2020
.s
1 January 2021
.s
1 February 2021
.s
1 March 2021
.s
1 June 2021
.s
1 July 2021
.s
1 August 2021
30
1 September 2021
36
1 October 2021
141
1 November 2021
231
1 December 2021
93
1 January 2022
45
1 February 2022
930
1 March 2022
2790
1 April 2022
1557
1 May 2022
1506
1 June 2022
1461
1 July 2022
1728
Total
10620
Page 4 of 5
COVID-19 case ICU admissions
Count
by month starting
1 March 2020
.s
1 April 2020
.s
1 May 2020
.s
1 July 2020
.s
1 August 2020
.s
1 September 2020
.s
1 August 2021
9
1 September 2021
.s
1 October 2021
9
1 November 2021
21
1 December 2021
9
1 January 2022
.s
1 February 2022
21
1 March 2022
87
1 April 2022
54
1 May 2022
51
1 June 2022
36
1 July 2022
48
Total
369
Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your request. Under section 28(3) of
the Act, you have the right to ask the Ombudsman to review any decisions made under this
request. The Ombudsman may be contacted by email at:
[email address] or by
calling 0800 802 602.
Nāku noa, nā
Gill Hall
Group Leader, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Knowledge
Public Health Agency, Ministry of Health
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