UK deaths that included influenza on the death certificate 2020 to 2022

FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3852

You asked

Please supply t​he number of deaths recorded in the United Kingdom between March 23rd 2020 and January 31st 2022 that included influenza on the death certificate - please include a breakdown of primary cause and factoring causes.

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.

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 2021 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 World Health Organisation (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

We have published annual mortality data available by cause for the years 2013-2020, this is available as part of our explorable dataset available on our NOMIS webservice. Influenza is coded under J09-J11. Please see the following instructions for using this service:

• 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)

Here are figures for deaths due to influenza in 2020:

Influenza is an illness that in most cases is recorded as the underlying cause of death, rather than a mention on the death certificate. In cases where someone died from influenza and pneumonia, influenza is normally the underlying condition which resulted in the death, but the pneumonia was a contributing factor. Therefore, ONS have not conducted analysis for deaths where influenza was the contributing factor. However, 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 can be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.

We have not yet produced influenza deaths for 2021. This will be available on our NOMIS webservice once the data have been finalised in the summer of 2022. We can include data for this year in a bespoke request for you for deaths registered in 2020 and 2021. However, 2021 figures are still provisional and subject to change. This is to allow inclusion of late registrations which are deaths which have been referred for Coroner investigation.