FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2629
You asked
Please could you send me the deaths from the flu virus for the years 2017 to 2021, and the deaths from COVID-19 from 2017 to 2021.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. For Scotland and Northern Ireland statistics please contact National Records Scotland and NISRA respectively.
Influenza
2017-2020
We hold annual analysis by cause for the years 2013 to 2020. This is available as part of our explorable dataset available on our NOMIS webservice. Influenza is coded under ICD-10 codes J09-J11.
Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).
- Select Age – All ages or 5 year age bands.
- Select Gender – Total or Male/Female
- Select rates – All deaths, rates or percentage of population for example.
- Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available). J09-J11
- Select format (Excel or CSV for example)
2021
We do not currently hold analysis showing 2021 figures for influenza alone. To fulfil this request, we would need use to create bespoke analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held. This information will be available in our next update of our Deaths Registered Series and on NOMIS is 2022, once the 2021 data are finalised.
However, it may be of interest to know that we do hold leading causes of death for 2021, included in table 11a and 11b our monthly mortality analysis. Influenza and pneumonia are grouped together under ICD-10 codes J09-J18.
COVID-19
The first COVID-19 death in England and Wales was registered in March 2020, so we do not hold COVID-19 data for years prior.
Deaths from COVID-19 may include cases where the doctor completing the death certificate diagnosed possible cases of COVID-19, for example, where this was based on relevant symptoms but no test for the virus was conducted. Deaths with a positive test are coded using the ICD10 code U0.71 and those with suspected COVID-19 but no test has been conducted are coded with ICD10 U0.72.
Table 12 of our monthly mortality analysis shows the number of deaths from March 2020 up to June 2021 due to COVID-19 and the number of deaths involving COVID-19. "Due to" refers only to deaths where COVID was recorded as the underlying cause of death and "involving" referring to deaths that had COVID mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.
COVID-19 and Influenza and pneumonia
We also produce a weekly cause breakdown table that includes both COVID-19 and influenza and pneumonia for 2020 – 2021 (current). This is included in the 'weekly figures by cause' table of our weekly deaths dataset, which may also be helpful for you.
If you would like to discuss your query further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.