Age-standardised mortality rates for deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), non-COVID-19 deaths and all deaths by vaccination status, broken down by age group.

This statistic shows the deaths with influenza as an underlying cause in England and Wales in 2023, by age and gender. In this year, influenza was the underlying cause of *** deaths for women aged 90 years and over. Respiratory disease burden in the UK As of 2023, tuberculosis cases had also been on the rise, with ***** new cases and relapses reported in 2023. The ***** age group was most affected by this respiratory disease, accounting for approximately ***** cases. Pneumonia, another serious respiratory condition, caused over ***** deaths among women aged 90 and older in the same year, with a further ***** men in the same age group having pneumonia as their underlying cause of death. Vaccination prevalence and accessibility In the years 2014-2015, **** percent of individuals aged 65 and over in the North West of England were immunized against influenza. This was the region with the highest share of elderly vaccinated against influenza, while this figure was the lowest in London, around **** percent. Community pharmacies have played a crucial role in providing seasonal influenza vaccination services – as of 2023/24, ** percent of community pharmacies in the South of England offered influenza vaccination advanced service, while in London, the figure reached ** percent.

Over 12 million people in the United States died from all causes between the beginning of January 2020 and August 21, 2023. Over 1.1 million of those deaths were with confirmed or presumed COVID-19.

Vaccine rollout in the United States Finding a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine was an urgent health priority since the very start of the pandemic. In the United States, the first two vaccines were authorized and recommended for use in December 2020. One has been developed by Massachusetts-based biotech company Moderna, and the number of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines administered in the U.S. was over 250 million. Moderna has also said that its vaccine is effective against the coronavirus variants first identified in the UK and South Africa.

For the week ending July 5, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were 639 below the number expected, compared with 567 below what was expected in the previous week. In late 2022 and through early 2023, excess deaths were elevated for a number of weeks, with the excess deaths figure for the week ending January 13, 2023, the highest since February 2021. In the middle of April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were almost 12,000 excess deaths a week recorded in England and Wales. It was not until two months later, in the week ending June 19, 2020, that the number of deaths began to be lower than the five-year average for the corresponding week. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 deaths in the United Kingdom, making that year the deadliest since 1918, at the height of the Spanish influenza pandemic. As seen in the excess death figures, April 2020 was by far the worst month in terms of deaths during the pandemic. The weekly number of deaths for weeks 16 and 17 of that year were 22,351, and 21,997 respectively. Although the number of deaths fell to more usual levels for the rest of that year, a winter wave of the disease led to a high number of deaths in January 2021, with 18,676 deaths recorded in the fourth week of that year. For the whole of 2021, there were 667,479 deaths in the UK, 22,150 fewer than in 2020. Life expectancy in the UK goes into reverse In 2022, life expectancy at birth for women in the UK was 82.6 years, while for men it was 78.6 years. This was the lowest life expectancy in the country for ten years, and came after life expectancy improvements stalled throughout the 2010s, and then declined from 2020 onwards. There is also quite a significant regional difference in life expectancy in the UK. In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for example, the life expectancy for men was 81.5 years, and 86.5 years for women. By contrast, in Blackpool, in North West England, male life expectancy was just 73.1 years, while for women, life expectancy was lowest in Glasgow, at 78 years.

Seasonal influenza is a viral infection that occurs annually in the winter months from December to March/April in the Northern Hemisphere and from May to August/September in the Southern Hemisphere. Two types of influenza virus, type A and B, are responsible for the majority of seasonal influenza infections in humans, and due to frequent virus mutations annual vaccination is recommended. The WHO estimates three to five million cases of severe seasonal influenza infections and 290,000 to 650,000 influenza-related respiratory deaths, most of them in the elderly population. Therefore, many countries recommend annual immunization against seasonal influenza, especially for high-risk groups such as young children, pregnant women, elderly people, and people with chronic diseases.
Immunization provides the best protection against the influenza virus and vaccines have been available for decades with a recent switch from trivalent to quadrivalent vaccines that protect against each two influenza type A and two B strains. Traditionally, seasonal influenza vaccines have been produced in eggs, but a slow manufacturing process and viral egg-adaptations have led to a push for cell-based and recombinant vaccine production methods in recent years.
Key Questions Answered
How will the seasonal influenza vaccine market landscape in the 8MM (US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Japan, Brazil) change from 20182028?
What are the most promising late-stage pipeline products for seasonal influenza vaccination?
How do the clinical and commercial attributes of late-stage pipeline products compare with one another, and against existing immunization options?
What are the remaining unmet needs in seasonal influenza immunization?
What drivers and barriers will affect seasonal influenza vaccine sales in the 8MM over the forecast period? Read More

Influenza-attributable burden for influenza-like-illness (ILI) general practitioner (GP) consultations, respiratory hospitalizations, and respiratory deaths.