Public Health England Report: PHE Weekly National Influenza Report

N

Nighthawk

https://assets.publishing.service.g...ly_national_influenza_report_week_10_2020.pdf

All-cause mortality data | Back to top|In week 092020, no statistically significant excess all-cause mortality by week of death was observed overallin England, through the EuroMOMO algorithm. In the devolved administrations,nostatistically significant excess all-cause mortality for all ages was observed for Northern Ireland andWalesin week 09and for Scotlandinweek 072020.

All-cause death registrations, England and Wales-In week 08 2020, an estimated 10,841 all-cause deaths were registered in England and Wales (source: Office for National Statistics). This is a slight decrease compared to the 10,944 estimated death registrations in week 07 2020.



Hint: Don´t tell your local coronavirus representative! :sneaky:
 
Highlights
  • •
    In the winter seasons from 2013/14 to 2016/17, an estimated average of 5,290,000 ILI cases occurred in Italy, corresponding to an incidence of 9%.
  • •
    More than 68,000 deaths attributable to flu epidemics were estimated in the study period.
  • •
    Italy showed a higher influenza attributable excess mortality compared to other European countries. especially in the elderly.

Abstract

Objectives
In recent years, Italy has been registering peaks in death rates, particularly among the elderly during the winter season. Influenza epidemics have been indicated as one of the potential determinants of such an excess. The objective of our study was to estimate the influenza-attributable contribution to excess mortality during the influenza seasons from 2013/14 to 2016/17 in Italy.

Methods
We used the EuroMomo and the FluMomo methods to estimate the annual trend of influenza-attributable excess death rate by age group. Population data were provided by the National Institute of Statistics, data on influenza like illness and confirmed influenza cases were provided by the National Institutes of Health. As an indicator of weekly influenza activity (IA) we adopted the Goldstein index, which is the product of the percentage of patients seen with influenza-like illness (ILI) and percentage of influenza-positive specimens, in a given week.

Results
We estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, respectively, using the Goldstein index. The average annual mortality excess rate per 100,000 ranged from 11.6 to 41.2 with most of the influenza-associated deaths per year registered among the elderly. However children less than 5 years old also reported a relevant influenza attributable excess death rate in the 2014/15 and 2016/17 seasons (1.05/100,000 and 1.54/100,000 respectively).

Conclusions
Over 68,000 deaths were attributable to influenza epidemics in the study period. The observed excess of deaths is not completely unexpected, given the high number of fragile very old subjects living in Italy. In conclusion, the unpredictability of the influenza virus continues to present a major challenge to health professionals and policy makers. Nonetheless, vaccination remains the most effective means for reducing the burden of influenza, and efforts to increase vaccine coverage and the introduction of new vaccine strategies (such as vaccinating healthy children) should be considered to reduce the influenza attributable excess mortality experienced in Italy and in Europe in the last seasons.

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(19)30328-5/fulltext
 

I m keen on reading news from UK especially nowadays as they haven t gone yet full lockdown mentality and are more likely to follow peer pressure from EU member states among other reasons, but above is an interesting article from BBC. It paints a grim picture, no matter the option chosen by governments
 
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