You asked
Please can you provide the following information:
How many people in the UK have died of influenza only from 1st January 2020 to 22nd December 2020 and the same time period for 2019, 2018, 2017 (these figures should exclude Sars cov2 aka Covid-19)
Can you also provide the total deaths in the UK from the 1st January 2020 to the 22nd December 2020 from Sara cov2 aka Covid-19. This should be from people without underlying pre-existing conditions and Sara cov2 was the primary cause of death.
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. 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 2017 to 2020
Annual mortality data for influenza is available for the years 2013 to 2019. 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 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 - Please enter ICD10 codes J09-J11 for influenza
- Select format (Excel or CSV for example)
A full breakdown of mortality data for 2020 is expected to be available in our annual death registration publication. This is expected to be released in July 2021.
Deaths from influenza and pneumonia combined for 2020 are available in the downloadable dataset beneath Figure 2 of the following bulletin, Deaths registered weekly bulletin (provisional), which may be of interest.
COVID-19 deaths with no underlying conditions:
Please see Table 6a of the following publication, Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales. This provides the number of deaths involving COVID-19 by pre-existing conditions in England and Wales between March and June 2020.
The publication states that of the 50,335 deaths that occurred in March to June 2020 involving COVID-19 in England and Wales, 45,859 (91.1%) had at least one pre-existing condition, while 4,476 (8.9%) had none. COVID-19 deaths where there was no pre-existing condition between March and June 2020 are included below.
- No pre-existing condition: England and Wales - 4476
- No pre-existing condition: England - 4169
- No pre-existing condition: Wales - 294
We define a pre-existing condition as the last health condition mentioned on the first part of the death certificate when it came before the coronavirus (COVID-19), or was an independent contributory factor in the death, mentioned in part II. Where only COVID-19 was recorded on the death certificate, or COVID-19 and subsequent conditions caused by COVID-19 were recorded, we refer to these deaths as having "No pre-existing conditions".
We are currently reassessing this publication and will be releasing an update soon analysing data from July onwards.
As such, influenza death data for 2020 and data for COVID-19 deaths with no underlying health conditions by age between July and December 2020 are considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, 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.
The final release date will be announced on our Release Calendar.