You asked
Please provide the number of deaths registered in the UK in the last 5 years where flu or pneumonia were mentioned on the death certificate.
Please also provide the number of deaths registered in the UK in the last 5 years where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, and the data subsetted by a) co-incident with (flu or pneumonia) being mentioned on the death certificate and b) without a mention of (flu or pneumonia).
Please provide this as a summary along with the underlying data including age at which mortality occurred.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Therefore, we do not hold the requested data for the whole of the UK. Should you wish to obtain this data from NRS and NISRA, they can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
However, please see the following information for England and Wales related to your request, which may be of interest.
All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) the coded mortality data available up to end of December 2019 is coded to version 2014 of the ICD10 framework. From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:
a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or
b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
Deaths involving influenza and pneumonia 2013- 2019
Annual mortality figures for deaths from influenza and pneumonia are available for 2013 - 2019. These figures are available as part of our explorable dataset within our NOMIS webservice. Influenza and Pneumonia are coded under J09-J18.
- 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-J18
- Select format (Excel or CSV for example)
Deaths involving influenza and pneumonia 2020-2021
Figure 2 of our deaths registered weekly bulletin shows the number of deaths from 2020 up to week ending 4 June due to Influenza and Pneumonia and the number of deaths involving Influenza and Pneumonia. "Due to" refers only to deaths where Influenza and Pneumonia was recorded as the underlying cause of death and "involving" referring to deaths that had Influenza and Pneumonia mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not. Please see the 'download data' option at the bottom of Figure 2 for these statistics.
Deaths involving COVID-19 and pre-existing conditions
We have been publishing a breakdown of COVID-19 deaths by age group in our weekly deaths bulletin. With statistics published up to week ending 4 June 2021. Please download the 'Covid-19 - Weekly registrations' table in the 2020 and 2021 datasets for weekly deaths involving COVID-19 by age.
For data showing deaths from COVID-19 by pre-existing condition, please see Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales. This dataset can be found in section 7 of the Monthly mortality analysis bulletin. This dataset provides a greater insight into the leading pre-existing cause of death groups for deaths occurring in England and Wales in 2020-2021 that were due to COVID-19.
This publication will be updated quarterly. COVID-19 deaths involving pre-existing conditions is split by broad age groups between 1-64 and 65+.
Analysis showing COVID-19 deaths with and without influenza and pneumonia in England and Wales is not held. In order to provide this, we would need to create bespoke analysis, which we are not obligated to do under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
We may be able to produce this as a bespoke request when the 2020 mortality data is finalised and published in July 2021. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime. If you would like to discuss this further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.