FOIA-type request on vaccination status of Covid-associated deaths in Germany

Recently, Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ) reported about a Bundestag request by Kay-Uwe Ziegler on the vaccination status of all Covid-associated deaths in Germany (please read epimetheus’ reporting here). Basically, the answer was that of around 187,000 cases of deaths, around 39,000 cases were unvaccinated, around 33,000 cases had been vaccinated at least once, and for around 115,000 cases, the vaccination status was unknown. NZZ (and others, e.g. Prof. Thomas Rießinger writing for Boris Reitschuster) concluded that because the year 2020 alone saw around 36,000 Covid deaths, and because no vaccines were available back then, only around 3,000 unvaccinated cases were recorded from 2021 onwards.

Sounds logical, but I am not so sure. For example, if you go to the RKI’s archives and browse their weekly reports (Wochenberichte), sometimes you will find tables containing numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated deaths. Here’s an example (with the rows on deaths highlighted):

These tables had been curated and only showed a small proportion of all Covid-associated deaths but that’s not my point here. If my archives are sound, for the period from calendar week 29 of 2021 until calendar week 11 of 2023, altogether 8,639 deaths were (selected and) reported, of which 4,507 were unvaccinated - which is more than 3,000.

The way to the truth is paved with better data. It is a shame that we only learned about the total numbers in 2025. Now we should demand more. I therefore wrote another FOIA-type request (previous exercise here) to the RKI via FragDenStaat.de, the current status of which you can access here. I tried to balance the request, asking for aggregated data by calendar week only, in order to avoid refusal due to privacy issues. We’ll see.