The burden of influenza in the United States can vary from year to year depending on which viruses are circulating, how many people receive an influenza vaccination, and how effective the vaccination is in that particular year. During the 2019-2020 flu season, around 25,000 people lost their lives to the disease. Although most people recover from influenza without needing medical care, the disease can be deadly among young children, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems or chronic illnesses.

Deaths due to influenza Even though most people recover from influenza without medical care, influenza and pneumonia can be deadly, especially for older people and those with certain preexisting conditions. Influenza is a common cause of pneumonia and although most cases of influenza do not develop into pneumonia, those that do are often more severe and more deadly. Deaths due to influenza are most common among the elderly, with a mortality rate of around 7.4 per 100,000 population during the 2021-2022 flu season. In comparison, the mortality rate for those aged 50 to 64 years was just 1.2 per 100,000 population.

Flu vaccinations The most effective way to prevent influenza is to receive a yearly influenza vaccination. These vaccines have proven to be safe and are usually cheap and easily accessible. Nevertheless, every year a large share of the population in the United States still fails to get vaccinated against influenza. For example, in the 2021-2022 flu season only 37 percent of those aged 18 to 49 years received a flu vaccination. Unsurprisingly, children and the elderly are the most likely to get vaccinated. It is estimated that during the 2021-2022 flu season vaccinations prevented over 618 thousand influenza cases among children aged 6 months to 4 years.

During the 2022-2023 flu season in the United States, around 21,401 people died from influenza. The vast majority of deaths due to influenza occur among the elderly, with those aged 65 years and older accounting for 15,399 deaths during the 2022-2023 flu season. During this time, the mortality rate from influenza among those aged 65 years and older was around 26.6 per 100,000 population, compared to a mortality rate of .7 per 100,000 population among those aged 18 to 49 years. Influenza deaths Although most people recover from influenza without the need of medical care, influenza and pneumonia are still major causes of death in the United States. Influenza is a common cause of pneumonia and cases in which influenza develops into pneumonia tend to be more severe and more deadly. However, the impact of influenza varies from year to year depending on which viruses are circulating. For example, during the 2017-2018 flu season around 51,000 people died due to influenza, whereas in 2022-2023 total deaths amounted to 21,000. Preventing death The most effective way to prevent influenza is to receive a yearly influenza vaccination. These vaccines have proven to be safe and are usually cheap and easily accessible. Each year, flu vaccinations prevent thousands of influenza cases, hospitalizations and deaths. It was estimated that during the 2022-2023 flu season, vaccinations prevented the deaths of around 2,479 people aged 65 years and older.

Influenza, also called the flu, is one of the most infectious diseases worldwide. Its symptoms range from mild to severe, and include sore throat, cough, runny nose, fever, headache, and muscle pain, but can also cause severe illness and death among high-risk populations such as the elderly and children. During the 2022-2023 flu season, there were 31 million cases of influenza in the United States.

Influenza deaths Although influenza does not require medical attention for most people, it can be deadly, and causes thousands of deaths every year. The impact of influenza varies from year to year. The number of influenza deaths during the 2021-2022 flu season was 4,977. The vast majority of deaths attributed to influenza during the 2021-2022 flu season occurred among those aged 65 years and older.

Vaccination An annual influenza vaccination remains the most effective way of preventing influenza. During the 2021-2022 flu season, influenza vaccinations prevented an estimated 867 deaths among U.S. adults aged 65 years and older. Although, flu vaccinations are accessible and cheap, a large share of the United States population still fails to get vaccinated every year. In 2021-2022, only 37 percent of those aged 18 to 49 years received a flu vaccination, much lower compared to children and the elderly.

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.

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.

Project Tycho datasets contain case counts for reported disease conditions for countries around the world. The Project Tycho data curation team extracts these case counts from various reputable sources, typically from national or international health authorities, such as the US Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization. These original data sources include both open- and restricted-access sources. For restricted-access sources, the Project Tycho team has obtained permission for redistribution from data contributors. All datasets contain case count data that are identical to counts published in the original source and no counts have been modified in any way by the Project Tycho team. The Project Tycho team has pre-processed datasets by adding new variables, such as standard disease and location identifiers, that improve data interpretabilty. We also formatted the data into a standard data format.

Each Project Tycho dataset contains case counts for a specific condition (e.g. measles) and for a specific country (e.g. The United States). Case counts are reported per time interval. In addition to case counts, datsets include information about these counts (attributes), such as the location, age group, subpopulation, diagnostic certainty, place of aquisition, and the source from which we extracted case counts. One dataset can include many series of case count time intervals, such as "US measles cases as reported by CDC", or "US measles cases reported by WHO", or "US measles cases that originated abroad", etc.

Depending on the intended use of a dataset, we recommend a few data processing steps before analysis:

• Analyze missing data: Project Tycho datasets do not inlcude time intervals for which no case count was reported (for many datasets, time series of case counts are incomplete, due to incompleteness of source documents) and users will need to add time intervals for which no count value is available. Project Tycho datasets do include time intervals for which a case count value of zero was reported.
• Separate cumulative from non-cumulative time interval series. Case count time series in Project Tycho datasets can be "cumulative" or "fixed-intervals". Cumulative case count time series consist of overlapping case count intervals starting on the same date, but ending on different dates. For example, each interval in a cumulative count time series can start on January 1st, but end on January 7th, 14th, 21st, etc. It is common practice among public health agencies to report cases for cumulative time intervals. Case count series with fixed time intervals consist of mutually exxclusive time intervals that all start and end on different dates and all have identical length (day, week, month, year). Given the different nature of these two types of case count data, we indicated this with an attribute for each count value, named "PartOfCumulativeCountSeries".

Influenza and pneumonia caused around 12.3 deaths in the U.S. per 100,000 population in 2019. Influenza and pneumonia are among the leading causes of death in the United States, accounting for around 1.6 percent of all deaths in 2020. Influenza, or the flu, is a viral infection that is highly contagious and especially common in the winter season. Influenza is a common cause of pneumonia, although most cases of the flu do not develop into pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection or inflammation of the lungs and is particularly deadly among young children and the elderly.

Influenza cases

Influenza is very common in the United States, with an estimated 35 million cases reported in 2019-2020. Common symptoms of the flu include cough, fever, runny or stuffy nose, sore throat and headache. Symptoms can be mild but can also be severe enough to require medical attention. In 2019-2020, there were around 16 million influenza-related medical visits in the United States.

Prevention

To prevent contracting the flu people can take everyday precautions such as regularly washing their hands and avoiding those who are sick, but the best way to prevent the flu is by receiving the flu vaccination every year. Receiving a flu vaccination is especially important for young children and the elderly as they are most susceptible to flu complications and associated death. In 2021, around 75 percent of those aged 65 years and older received a flu vaccine, while only 38 percent of those aged 18 to 49 years had done so.

This dataset represents preliminary estimates of cumulative U.S. COVID-19 disease burden for the 2024-2025 period, including illnesses, outpatient visits, hospitalizations, and deaths. The weekly COVID-19-associated burden estimates are preliminary and based on continuously collected surveillance data from patients hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. The data come from the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)-Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network (COVID-NET), a surveillance platform that captures data from hospitals that serve about 10% of the U.S. population. Each week CDC estimates a range (i.e., lower estimate and an upper estimate) of COVID-19 -associated burden that have occurred since October 1, 2024.

Note: Data are preliminary and subject to change as more data become available. Rates for recent COVID-19-associated hospital admissions are subject to reporting delays; as new data are received each week, previous rates are updated accordingly.

References

1. Reed C, Chaves SS, Daily Kirley P, et al. Estimating influenza disease burden from population-based surveillance data in the United States. PLoS One. 2015;10(3):e0118369. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118369 
2. Rolfes, MA, Foppa, IM, Garg, S, et al. Annual estimates of the burden of seasonal influenza in the United States: A tool for strengthening influenza surveillance and preparedness. Influenza Other Respi Viruses. 2018; 12: 132– 137. https://doi.org/10.1111/irv.12486
3. Tokars JI, Rolfes MA, Foppa IM, Reed C. An evaluation and update of methods for estimating the number of influenza cases averted by vaccination in the United States. Vaccine. 2018;36(48):7331-7337. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.10.026 
4. Collier SA, Deng L, Adam EA, Benedict KM, Beshearse EM, Blackstock AJ, Bruce BB, Derado G, Edens C, Fullerton KE, Gargano JW, Geissler AL, Hall AJ, Havelaar AH, Hill VR, Hoekstra RM, Reddy SC, Scallan E, Stokes EK, Yoder JS, Beach MJ. Estimate of Burden and Direct Healthcare Cost of Infectious Waterborne Disease in the United States. Emerg Infect Dis. 2021 Jan;27(1):140-149. doi: 10.3201/eid2701.190676. PMID: 33350905; PMCID: PMC7774540.
5. Reed C, Kim IK, Singleton JA,  et al. Estimated influenza illnesses and hospitalizations averted by vaccination–United States, 2013-14 influenza season. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2014 Dec 12;63(49):1151-4. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6349a2.htm 
6. Reed C, Angulo FJ, Swerdlow DL, et al. Estimates of the Prevalence of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, United States, April–July 2009. Emerg Infect Dis. 2009;15(12):2004-2007. https://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1512.091413  
7. Devine O, Pham H, Gunnels B, et al. Extrapolating Sentinel Surveillance Information to Estimate National COVID-19 Hospital Admission Rates: A Bayesian Modeling Approach. Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irv.70026. Volume18, Issue10. October 2024.
8. https://www.cdc.gov/covid/php/covid-net/index.html">COVID-NET | COVID-19 | CDC 
9. https://www.cdc.gov/covid/hcp/clinical-care/systematic-review-process.html 
10. https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/3/pgac079/6604394?login=false">Excess natural-cause deaths in California by cause and setting: March 2020 through February 2021 | PNAS Nexus | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
11. Kruschke, J. K. 2011. Doing Bayesian data analysis: a tutorial with R and BUGS. Elsevier, Amsterdam, Section 3.3.5.

Effective September 27, 2023, this dataset will no longer be updated. Similar data are accessible from wonder.cdc.gov.

Deaths involving COVID-19, pneumonia, and influenza reported to NCHS by sex, age group, and jurisdiction of occurrence.

In the United States, the highest rate of hospitalizations due to influenza are among those aged 65 years and older. During the 2022-2023 flu season, the rate of hospitalizations due to influenza among this age group was about 332 per 100,000 population, compared to a rate of around 46 per 100,000 for those aged 5 to 17 years. Influenza is a common viral infection that usually does not require medical treatment. However, for the very young, the old, and those with certain pre-existing conditions, influenza can be serious and even deadly.

The burden of influenza in the United States The impact of influenza in the United States varies from year to year depending on the strain that is most prevalent during that season and the immunity in the population. Nevertheless, influenza and pneumonia are often among the top ten causes of death in the United States. Preliminary estimates show that around 21,000 people died from influenza during the 2022-2023 flu season. However, during the 2017-2018 flu season, an estimated 51,000 people lost their lives to influenza.

The importance of flu vaccines The best way to avoid catching the flu and to reduce the virus’s overall burden on society is by receiving an annual flu vaccination. The CDC currently recommends that everyone over 6 months of age should get a flu vaccination every year, preferably by the end of October. The flu vaccine is safe, efficient, and reduces the number of illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by the virus. For example, during the 2018-2019 flu season it was estimated that vaccinations averted around 58 thousand influenza-related hospitalizations. However, despite the proven benefits and wide availability of flu vaccinations, a large percentage of people in the United States fail to receive a vaccination every year. During the 2021-2022 flu season, only about 37 percent of those aged 18 to 49 years were vaccinated against influenza, compared to 74 percent of those aged 65 years and older.

In the United States, influenza vaccination rates differ greatly by age. For example, during the 2022-2023 flu season, around 70 percent of those aged 65 years and older received an influenza vaccination, compared to just 35 percent of those aged 18 to 49 years. The CDC recommends that everyone six months and older in the United States should get vaccinated against influenza every year, with a few exceptions. Although influenza is mild for most people it can lead to hospitalization and even death, especially among the young, the old, and those with certain preexisting conditions.

The impact of flu vaccinations Flu vaccinations are safe and effective, preventing thousands of illnesses, medical visits, and deaths every year. However, the effectiveness of flu vaccines varies each year depending on what flu viruses are circulating that season and the age and health status of the person receiving the vaccination. During the 2022-2023 flu season it was estimated that influenza vaccination prevented almost 31 thousand hospitalizations among those aged 65 years and older. In addition, flu vaccinations prevented 2,479 deaths among those aged 65 years and older as well as 63 deaths among children six months to four years.

The burden of influenza The impact of influenza is different from season to season. However, during the 2022-2023 flu season there were around 31 million cases of influenza in the United States. Furthermore, there were around 21,000 deaths due to influenza, an increase from the previous year but significantly fewer than in 2017-2018 when influenza contributed to 51,000 deaths. Most of these deaths are among the elderly. In 2022-2023 the death rate due to influenza among those aged 65 years and older was around 26.6 per 100,000 population. In comparison, those aged 18 to 49 years had an influenza death rate of just .7 per 100,000 population.

As of January 6, 2022, an average of 1,192 people per day have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. since the first case was confirmed in the country on January 20th the year before. On an average day, nearly 8,000 people die from all causes in the United States, based on data from 2019. Based on the latest information, roughly one in seven deaths each day were related to COVID-19 between January 2020 and January 2022. However, there were even days when more than every second death in the U.S. was connected to COVID-19. The daily death toll from the seasonal flu, using preliminary maximum estimates from the 2019-2020 influenza season, stood at an average of around 332 people. We have to keep in mind that a comparison of influenza and COVID-19 is somewhat difficult. COVID-19 cases and deaths are counted continuously since the begin of the pandemic, whereas flue counts are seasonal and often less accurate. Furthermore, during the last two years, COVID-19 more or less 'replaced' the flu, with COVID-19 absorbing potential flu cases. Many countries reported a very weak seasonal flu activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it has yet to be seen how the two infectious diseases will develop side by side during the winter season 2021/2022 and in the years to come.

Symptoms and self-isolation COVID-19 and influenza share similar symptoms – a cough, runny nose, and tiredness – and telling the difference between the two can be difficult. If you have minor symptoms, there is no need to seek urgent medical care, but it is recommended that you self-isolate, whereas rules vary from country to country. Additionally, rules depend on someone's vaccination status and infection history. However, if you think you have the disease, a diagnostic test can show if you have an active infection.

Scientists alert to coronavirus mutations The genetic material of the novel coronavirus is RNA, not DNA. Other notable human diseases caused by RNA viruses include SARS, Ebola, and influenza. A continual problem that vaccine developers encounter is that viruses can mutate, and a treatment developed against a certain virus type may not work on a mutated form. The seasonal flu vaccine, for example, is different each year because influenza viruses are frequently mutating, and it is critical that those genetic changes continue to be tracked.

Rank, number of deaths, percentage of deaths, and age-specific mortality rates for the leading causes of death, by age group and sex, 2000 to most recent year.

As of May 2, 2023, the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) had spread to almost every country in the world, and more than 6.86 million people had died after contracting the respiratory virus. Over 1.16 million of these deaths occurred in the United States.

Waves of infections Almost every country and territory worldwide have been affected by the COVID-19 disease. At the end of 2021 the virus was once again circulating at very high rates, even in countries with relatively high vaccination rates such as the United States and Germany. As rates of new infections increased, some countries in Europe, like Germany and Austria, tightened restrictions once again, specifically targeting those who were not yet vaccinated. However, by spring 2022, rates of new infections had decreased in many countries and restrictions were once again lifted.

What are the symptoms of the virus? It can take up to 14 days for symptoms of the illness to start being noticed. The most commonly reported symptoms are a fever and a dry cough, leading to shortness of breath. The early symptoms are similar to other common viruses such as the common cold and flu. These illnesses spread more during cold months, but there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that temperature impacts the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Medical advice should be sought if you are experiencing any of these symptoms.

The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday. Over the course of the next 220 years, this number has dropped drastically, and the rate has dropped to its lowest point ever in 2020 where it is just seven deaths per thousand births. Although the child mortality rate has decreased greatly over this 220 year period, there were two occasions where it increased; in the 1870s, as a result of the fourth cholera pandemic, smallpox outbreaks, and yellow fever, and in the late 1910s, due to the Spanish Flu pandemic.

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.

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.

In 2023, around 39 percent of Canadians reported receiving an influenza immunization in the past year. The year 2020 saw the highest share of Canadians receiving an influenza immunization in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic and the increased awareness of health and virus transmission that it brought may have motivated more people in Canada to receive a flu vaccination in 2020 than in recent years. Flu vaccinations in Canada The Canadian government recommends that everyone six months and older should get a yearly flu vaccination. The vaccine is safe and effective and is easily accessible in Canada. However, although the flu vaccination is the best defense against catching and spreading the flu, many Canadians still choose not to receive the vaccination. For example, a survey from 2020, found that only around 48 percent of Canadians stated they planned to get an influenza vaccination that year. The same survey also asked U.S. adults about their plans to receive an influenza vaccination that year, with around 53 percent stating they planned on getting one. Deaths from influenza Although influenza may seem like a relatively harmless virus to many, influenza and pneumonia are in fact the 10th leading cause of death in Canada. Older adults and those with preexisting health conditions such as cancer and heart disease are some of the groups most at risk of dying from influenza and pneumonia. In 2021, the death rate for influenza and pneumonia in Canada was about 10.8 per 100,000 population, a decrease from recent years. It is important to remember that when receiving an influenza vaccination, one is not only protecting oneself, but also helping to minimize the chances of other people catching the virus.