Deaths and hospital admissions from influenza 2010 to 2021

FOI/2021/2650​

You asked

Please supply the following information:

• Flu deaths since 2010 - 2021 annually

• Hospitals admissions for flu in the same period

• Vaccine related deaths occurred in the same period

• Deaths by suicide

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Influenza deaths

Deaths from influenza 2013 to 2020:

Deaths involving influenza (ICD10 code J09-J11) from 2013 to 2020 in England and Wales are available via our NOMIS webservice

Further information regarding annual influenza deaths is also available via our following link to our death registered bulletins: Deaths registered in England and Wales Statistical bulletins. Data is available from 2012 to 2020. Data from 2010 is available on the National Archives. Should you have any issues accessing this information please contact us at Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.

We are working on analysis of 2021 deaths due to influenza only, which will be released in 2022. Once we have finalised these plans a publication date will be announced on our Release Calendar.

As such, information about deaths due to influenza only for 2021 is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration, and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.

This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.

2021 data for deaths due to influenza and pneumonia can be found in the following publication, using the "weekly figures by cause" tab: Deaths Registered Weekly in England and Wales. This publication is updated every Tuesday.

Hospital Admissions

Unfortunately, we do not hold hospital admissions and discharges. NHS Digital may be better place to assist with your request. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk, and by telephone at 0300 303 5678.

Deaths involving vaccines

Our NOMIS webservice holds analysis on deaths due to vaccines (ICD-10 code Y58 to Y59) from 2013 to 2020 for England and Wales.

Earlier data can be found in our 20^th Century Mortality publication on the National Archives, which has an ICD-10/ICD-9 look up on the front page. Data is available within this dataset from 1901 to 2000. 21^st Century Mortality is available from 2001 to 2020.

Our NOMIS webservice will be updated with 2021 data in 2022. This information is also therefore exempt under section 22 of FOIA.

Further breakdowns of the information about deaths due to vaccinations may be available to commission as bespoke analysis. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.

You can find the number of deaths involving COVID-19 (not restricted to first or second vaccination) in table 12 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset, these include figures for deaths involving adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination. There are currently 4 deaths registered with the aligning ICD-10 codes for this (U12.9). The latest data available is June 2021. However, should this change, they will be updated in this table. This publication is due to be updated in August 2021.

Suicides

Suicides in the UK provides registered deaths in England and wales from 1981 to 2019.  This is the latest annual data available.

Age-standardised suicide rates (with 95 per cent confidence limits): by sex, England and Wales, 1981 to 2019 registrations

Notes

¹ The National Statistics definition of suicide is given in the 'Guidance' tab.

² Figures are for persons aged 10 years and over.

³ Age-standardised suicide rates per 100,000 population, standardised to the 2013 European Standard Population.

Age-standardised rates are used to allow comparison between populations which may contain different proportions of people of different ages.

⁴ The lower and upper confidence limits have been provided. These form a confidence interval, which is a measure of the statistical precision of an estimate and shows the range of uncertainty around the estimated figure. Calculations based on small numbers of events are often subject to random fluctuations. As a general rule, if the confidence interval around one figure overlaps with the interval around another, we cannot say with certainty that there is more than a chance difference between the two figures.

⁵ Deaths of non-residents are included in figures for England and Wales.

⁶ Figures are for deaths registered, rather than deaths occurring in each calendar year. Due to the length of time it takes to complete a coroner's inquest, it can take months or even years for a suicide to be registered.

We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths from October to December 2020 and provisional data for January to March 2021 which was released in April 2021. The publication explains that most suicides require an inquest, where a coroner must investigate the cause of death. The amount of time taken to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date the death occurred and the date the death is registered.

We refer to this as a registration delay and registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be five to six months on average. As our data is based on death registrations, this delay means that most deaths recorded for 2020 so far would have occurred in 2019. More detailed information can be found in the publication.

Our next Suicide in England and Wales publication is scheduled for release in September 2021, which will include 2020 data.

For further information please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.