Comparison of deaths from influenza and COVID-19 January 2019 to October 2020

You asked

​​Can you tell me how many cases of influenza there were in the UK from January 2019 until October 2020 and also how many influenza deaths there were during the same period, compared to COVID-19 cases and deaths?

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. 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 can be found annually on our NOMIS webservice for 2019 using ICD10 code J09-J11.

Please see the following table, which provides the total of influenza deaths in 2019:

Please also see the following publication: Deaths due to COVID-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia. This provides provisional counts of the number of death occurrences in England and Wales due to coronavirus (COVID-19), influenza and pneumonia, by age, sex and place of death from 1 January to 31August 2020.

This publication states that between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) compared with 394 deaths due to influenza.

Unfortunately, we would be unable to provide any further information regarding influenza deaths for September and October 2020. In order to fulfil this part of your request, we would need to create analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not required to create information in order to answer requests. Therefore, we consider this to be information not held.

You may find the following publication of interest: Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional. Figure two of this publication shows 2020 death registrations due to or involving influenza and pneumonia combined. This publication is updated every Tuesday.

We also run the COVID-19 Infection Survey which is a household survey of the community population of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The survey started on 26 April 2020. We publish a weekly bulletin detailing our main results as well as a monthly article with additional analysis. In the data set accompanying our bulletin you can find the modelled estimate of the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 for non-overlapping 14 day periods since the start of the study. You can also find the modelled estimate of the number of new infections per day for the latest 6 weeks on tab 2b.

Unfortunately, we would be unable to provide information on how many influenza infections were recorded in England and Wales, as we do not hold information on infection rates. Public Health England and Public Health Wales would be better placed to answer this part of your request.