UK influenza/flu deaths without underlying co-morbidities broken down by age

FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3627

You asked

Please supply the number of influenza/flu deaths without underlying co-morbidities broken down by age group (0..9, 10..19, 20..29, etc) in the UK (or England and Wales) going back to year 2000 or as far back as data is available.

We said

​Thank you for your enquiry requesting UK deaths due to influenza with no pre-existing conditions.

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. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.

Influenza deaths with no-pre-existing conditions

We do not hold analysis of the number of deaths due to influenza where no pre-existing condition was recorded on the death certificate.

To fulfil your request, we would need to create bespoke analysis. Bespoke 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 should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.

Influenza deaths 2000-2021

We do publish the number of annual influenza deaths for England and Wales and this is available from our interactive webservice NOMIS for the calendar years 2013 to 2020.

Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. All the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). 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 the Wordl Health Organization (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

The ICD-10 cause code for influenza is J09 - J11

Number of death registrations due to influenza, England, and Wales, 2012 to 2020 ¹ , ² , ³

Notes:

1. Underlying cause of death was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes J09 to J11.                                      
2. Figures are for England and Wales and include deaths of non-residents.

3. Figures are based on deaths registered between 2012 and 2020.  Figures include deaths that were registered by 31 Dec 2020, so may be an underestimate due to registration delays.

For data prior to 2013, please use our 21^st Century Mortality publication, which will provide deaths due to influenza from 2001 to 2020. If you require prior to 2001, please use 20^th Century Mortality. ONS also publish numbers of weekly deaths for influenza & pneumonia combined (ICD-10 codes J09-J18) for England and Wales, 2021 to 2022, in our weekly deaths publication. You can view the reference tables here.  Please refer to Table 3 of our latest publication for 2022 data.  Figures for 2021 are available here.

If you wish to make a request for data or discuss this further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.