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 347 deaths for women aged 90 years and over.

Between January and August 2020, there has been approximately 48.2 thousand deaths in England and Wales with COVID-19 as an underlying cause. As illustrated in the table, the number of deaths as a result of COVID-19 are much higher than from either pneumonia or influenza. There has been over three times the number of deaths from COVID-19 than pneumonia and influenza so far in 2020. The overall number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Provisional counts of the number of death occurrences in England and Wales due to coronavirus (COVID-19) and influenza and pneumonia, by age, sex and place of death.

For the week ending March 7, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were 124 below the number expected, compared with 460 fewer than 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 Coronavirus (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.

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.

The mortality rate from influenza in the United States is by far highest among those aged 65 years and older. During the 2022-2023 flu season the mortality rate from influenza for this age group was around 26.6 per 100,000 population.

The burden of influenza The impact of influenza in the U.S. varies from season to season, but in the 2022-2023 flu season there were an estimated 31 million cases. These cases resulted in around 360,000 hospitalizations. Although most people recover from influenza without requiring medical treatment, the disease can be deadly for young children, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems or chronic illnesses. During the 2022-2023 flu season, around 21,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives due to influenza.

Impact of vaccinations The most effective way to prevent influenza is to receive a yearly vaccination at the beginning of flu season. Flu vaccines are safe and can greatly reduce the burden of the disease. During the 2022-2023 flu season vaccinations prevented around 2,479 deaths among those aged 65 years and older. Although flu vaccines are usually cheap and easily accessible, every year a large share of the population in the U.S. still does not get vaccinated. For example, during the 2021-2022 flu season only about 37 percent of those aged 18 to 49 years received a flu vaccination.

There were 667,479 deaths in the United Kingdom in 2021, compared with 689,629 in 2020. Between 2003 and 2011, the annual number of deaths in the UK fell from 612,085 to just over 552,232. Since 2011 however, the annual number of annual deaths in the United Kingdom has steadily grown, with the number recorded in 2020, the highest since 1918 when there were 715,246 deaths. Both of these spikes in the number of deaths can be attributed to infectious disease pandemics. The great influenza pandemic of 1918, which was at its height towards the end of World War One, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a large number of deaths in 2020.  Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic The weekly death figures for England and Wales highlight the tragic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. In two weeks in April of 2020, there were 22,351 and 21,997 deaths respectively, almost 12,000 excess deaths in each of those weeks. Although hospitals were the most common location of these deaths, a significant number of these deaths also took place in care homes, with 7,911 deaths taking place in care homes for the week ending April 24, 2020, far higher than usual. By the summer of 2020, the number of deaths in England and Wales reached more usual levels, before a second wave of excess deaths hit the country in early 2021. Although subsequent waves of COVID-19 cases resulted in far fewer deaths, the number of excess deaths remained elevated throughout 2022. Long-term life expectancy trends As of 2022 the life expectancy for men in the United Kingdom was 78.57, and almost 82.57 for women, compared with life expectancies of 75 for men and 80 for women in 2002. In historical terms, this is a major improvement in relation to the mid 18th century, when the overall life expectancy was just under 39 years. Between 2011 and 2017, improvements in life expectancy in the UK did start to decline, and have gone into reverse since 2018/20. Between 2020 and 2022 for example, life expectancy for men in the UK has fallen by over 37 weeks, and by almost 23 weeks for women, when compared with the previous year.

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.

The influenza pandemic of 1918, known as the Spanish Flu, was one of the deadliest and widespread pandemics in human history. The scale of the outbreak, as well as limitations in technology, medicine and communication, create difficulties when trying to uncover accurate figures relating to the pandemic. Estimates suggest that the virus, known as the H1N1 influenza virus, infected more than one quarter of the global population, which equated to approximately 500 million people in 1920. It was responsible for roughly 25 million fatalities, although some projections suggest that it could have caused double this number of deaths. The exact origins of this strain of influenza remain unclear to this day, however it was first noticed in Western Europe in the latter stages of the First World War. Wartime censorship in Europe meant that the severity of the pandemic was under-reported, while news outlets in neutral Spain were free to report openly about the impact of the virus; this gave the illusion that the virus was particularly strong in Spain, giving way to the term "Spanish Flu".

Effects of the virus

By late summer 1918, the pandemic had spread across the entire continent, and the H1N1 virus had mutated into a deadlier strain that weakened the infected's immune system more than traditional influenzas. Some studies suggest that, in contrast to these traditional influenza viruses, having a stronger immune system was actually a liability in the case of the H1N1 virus as it triggered what is known as a "cytokine storm". This is where white blood cells release proteins called cytokines, which signal the body to attack the virus, in turn releasing more white blood cells which release more cytokines. This cycle over-works and greatly weakens the immune system, often giving way to other infections; most commonly pneumonia in the case of the Spanish Flu. For this reason, the Spanish Flu had an uncommonly high fatality rate among young adults, who are traditionally the healthiest group in society. Some theories for the disproportionate death-rate among young adults suggest that the elderly's immune systems benefitted from exposure to earlier influenza pandemics, such as the "Asiatic/Russian Flu" pandemic of 1889.

Decrease in life expectancy As the war in Europe came to an end, soldiers returning home brought the disease to all corners of the world, and the pandemic reached global proportions. Isolated and under-developed nations were especially vulnerable; particularly in Samoa, where almost one quarter of the population died within two months and life expectancy fell to just barely over one year for those born in 1918; this was due to the arrival of a passenger ship from New Zealand in November 1918, where the infected passengers were not quarantined on board, allowing the disease to spread rapidly. Other areas where life expectancy dropped below ten years for those born in 1918 were present-day Afghanistan, the Congo, Fiji, Guatemala, Kenya, Micronesia, Serbia, Tonga and Uganda. The British Raj, now Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, saw more fatalities than any other region, with as many as five percent of the entire population perishing as a result of the pandemic. The pandemic also had a high fatality rate among pregnant women and infants, and greatly impacted infant mortality rates across the world. There were several waves of the pandemic until late 1920, although they decreased in severity as time progressed, and none were as fatal as the outbreak in 1918. A new strain of the H1N1 influenza virus did re-emerge in 2009, and was colloquially known as "Swine Flu"; thankfully it had a much lower fatality rate due to medical advancements across the twentieth century.

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

The dataset provides a list of the wild birds identified and submitted under both passive and active (targeted) surveillance programmes in Great Britain for testing for Avian Influenza by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA). The main emphasis in the surveillance programmes is on patrols of designated reserves by skilled wild bird ecologists and wardens to locate “found dead” wild birds, including “mass mortality incidents”. These Warden Patrols continue all-year-round, and are also seasonally targeted in the winter and spring periods (October to March) each year. Members of the public are also asked to remain vigilant for mass bird mortality incidents occurring in any location in GB and report these to the Defra Helpline. The criteria for a “mass mortality incident” are five or more wild birds of any species at any location in England, Scotland and Wales. The dataset contains information on the identity of the bird, the date, location and which samples were taken from those birds and their test results. Please Note: The location represents a 10km x 10km square in which the bird was found. Location data is provided by the submitter and is not verified and, if no location information is available, the location of the testing laboratory may be used. For further information and explanations of the data included in this dataset, please see the data dictionary available for download alongside this dataset. Attribution statement:

The First World War saw the mobilization of more than 65 million soldiers, and the deaths of almost 15 million soldiers and civilians combined. Approximately 8.8 million of these deaths were of military personnel, while six million civilians died as a direct result of the war; mostly through hunger, disease and genocide. The German army suffered the highest number of military losses, totaling at more than two million men. Turkey had the highest civilian death count, largely due to the mass extermination of Armenians, as well as Greeks and Assyrians. Varying estimates suggest that Russia may have suffered the highest number of military and total fatalities in the First World War. However, this is complicated by the subsequent Russian Civil War and Russia's total specific to the First World War remains unclear to this day.

Proportional deaths In 1914, Central and Eastern Europe was largely divided between the empires of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia, while the smaller Balkan states had only emerged in prior decades with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. For these reasons, the major powers in the east were able to mobilize millions of men from across their territories, as Britain and France did with their own overseas colonies, and were able to utilize their superior manpower to rotate and replace soldiers, whereas smaller nations did not have this luxury. For example, total military losses for Romania and Serbia are around 12 percent of Germany's total military losses; however, as a share of their total mobilized forces these countries lost roughly 33 percent of their armies, compared to Germany's 15 percent mortality rate. The average mortality rate of all deployed soldiers in the war was around 14 percent.

Unclarity in the totals Despite ending over a century ago, the total number of deaths resulting from the First World War remains unclear. The impact of the Influenza pandemic of 1918, as well as various classifications of when or why fatalities occurred, has resulted in varying totals with differences ranging in the millions. Parallel conflicts, particularly the Russian Civil War, have also made it extremely difficult to define which conflicts the fatalities should be attributed to. Since 2012, the totals given by Hirschfeld et al in Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War have been viewed by many in the historical community as the most reliable figures on the subject.

At the beginning of the 1840s, life expectancy from birth in Ireland was just over 38 years. However, this figure would see a dramatic decline with the beginning of the Great Famine in 1845, and dropped below 21 years in the second half of the decade (in 1849 alone, life expectancy fell to just 14 years). The famine came as a result of a Europe-wide potato blight, which had a disproportionally devastating impact on the Irish population due to the dependency on potatoes (particularly in the south and east), and the prevalence of a single variety of potato on the island that allowed the blight to spread faster than in other areas of Europe. Additionally, authorities forcefully redirected much of the country's surplus grain to the British mainland, which exacerbated the situation. Within five years, mass starvation would contribute to the deaths of over one million people on the island, while a further one million would emigrate; this also created a legacy of emigration from Ireland, which saw the population continue to fall until the mid-1900s, and the total population of the island is still well below its pre-famine level of 8.5 million people.

Following the end of the Great Famine, life expectancy would begin to gradually increase in Ireland, as post-famine reforms would see improvements in the living standards of the country’s peasantry, most notably the Land Wars, a largely successful series of strikes, boycotts and protests aimed at reform of the country's agricultural land distribution, which began in the 1870s and lasted into the 20th century. As these reforms were implemented, life expectancy in Ireland would rise to more than fifty years by the turn of the century. While this rise would slow somewhat in the 1910s, due to the large number of Irish soldiers who fought in the First World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic, as well as the period of civil unrest leading up to the island's partition in 1921, life expectancy in Ireland would rise greatly in the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, Ireland's healthcare system and living standards developed similarly to the rest of Western Europe, and today, it is often ranks among the top countries globally in terms of human development, GDP and quality of healthcare. With these developments, the increase in life expectancy from birth in Ireland was relatively constant in the first century of independence, and in 2020 is estimated to be 82 years.

Life expectancy in India was 25.4 in the year 1800, and over the course of the next 220 years, it has increased to almost 70. Between 1800 and 1920, life expectancy in India remained in the mid to low twenties, with the largest declines coming in the 1870s and 1910s; this was because of the Great Famine of 1876-1878, and the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919, both of which were responsible for the deaths of up to six and seventeen million Indians respectively; as well as the presence of other endemic diseases in the region, such as smallpox. From 1920 onwards, India's life expectancy has consistently increased, but it is still below the global average.