Deaths from influenza, pneumonia and COVID-19

FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3489

You asked

​Please supply data from 2019-latest on the deaths and hospitalisation number and average age of death for influenza, pneumonia and Covid-19.

Please supply deaths related to Covid-19 vaccinated and the unvaccinated in regards to Covid-19 or direct me to where this can be obtained.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Deaths due to COVID-19, influenza, and pneumonia for 2019 and 2020 are available from our NOMIS webservice.

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 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 codes for your requests are:

•        J09-J11 - Influenza

•        J12 - J18 - Pneumonia

•        U07.1 and U07.2 - COVID-19

2021 data

We publish provisional data regarding the above causes within our Deaths Registered Weekly in England and Wales analysis, using the Weekly figures by cause tab.

From 2 January 2021 to 31 December 2021 there have been 104,785 deaths registered involving influenza and pneumonia, of which 16,079 have influenza and pneumonia as the underlying cause.

For the same date period, there have been 76,094 deaths registered involving COVID-19, of which 66,073 have COVID-19 as the underlying cause.

We will publish influenza and pneumonia figures separately in July 2022 as part of our regular annual mortality publication, named the Deaths Registered Series. This data will also be available on NOMIS.

Should you wish to request provisional 2021 mortality data for influenza and pneumonia figures separately prior to July, this would need to be extracted as part of our bespoke services. Average age of death for Covid-19, Influenza and Pneumonia for 2019-2021 would also need to be extracted as part of our bespoke services. 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 and can be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.

All cause and COVID-19 deaths by vaccination status

We have published weekly counts of deaths, population and age-standardised mortality rates by vaccination status in our most recent publication on this topic, "Deaths involving COVID-19 by Vaccination Status, England: deaths occurring between 2 January and 31 October 2021". We use 21 days after vaccination as this is when the vaccine is deemed to be effective.

The data are for England only, as vaccinations data for Wales is not yet available to be linked to the mortality dataset and the Public Health Data Asset covers England only. Therefore, we consider data for Wales as information not held.

Table 5 of this publication shows monthly age-standardised mortality rates by age-group and vaccination status for deaths involving COVID-19 from January to October 2021.

Please note, this publication does not include deaths attributed to adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccination.

Our next publication will include booster jabs which will be published in February 2022. Final release date will be announced on our Release Calendar.

As such, the information you have requested is 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 UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) also publish data that could help answer your enquiry. They publish a weekly surveillance report which looks at the impact on hospitalisations, infection, vaccine effectiveness and COVID-19 mortality. They can be contacted on InformationRights@UKHSA.gov.uk

The UKHSA weekly surveillance report includes numbers of COVID-19 deaths (defined as a death within 28 or 60 days of a positive COVID-19 test) for 4 week periods, by vaccination status, where vaccination status is defined relative to the infection date, rather than the date of death as for the ONS releases on deaths by vaccination status.