Winter death rates jump by 6% amid flu outbreak

Death counts have spiked by more than 7,000 in the midst of the worst winter health crisis seen for years.

Official figures show the number of deaths in England and Wales this winter are up 6 per cent compared to the average seen over the last five years.

The data shows 125,800 people died of any cause between October 1 and December 22 – compared to 118,700 for the same period in previous years.

It means 7,100 more people died in those three months than did in previous years.

The numbers are likely to have since soared, as pressures have vastly increased since Christmas.

Official figures show the NHS is in the midst of its worst flu outbreak in seven years, with the number of patients visiting their GP with symptoms doubling in a single week.

 Official figures show the NHS is in the midst of its worst flu outbreak in seven years, with the number of patients visiting their GP with symptoms doubling in a single week

Some 85 deaths have been confirmed in laboratory reports to have been caused by flu, which are likely to only capture a fraction of the true number.

The latest figures include all deaths, but 14,475 – 13 per cent of the total – are classified as having been caused by respiritary diseases, suggesting flu could be contributing to the rise.

The problem is likely to have been made worse because the main H3N2 flu strain circulating this year – known as ‘Aussie flu’ after a major outbreak in Australia last winter – is resistant against vaccination among the elderly.

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Some 85 per cent of the deaths – 106,600 of them – have been among those over the age of 65.

Health bosses have written to GPs asking them to use up their vaccine stocks within a fortnight – when the flu season is expected to peak.

Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS England medical director, and Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, told doctors: ‘We appreciate the very real pressures you are under, but we only have a couple of weeks left to maximise the impact of the vaccine programme and nationally there are still over three million patients in target groups that could benefit.’

The flu outbreak is putting a huge strain on hospitals, with doctors warning the conditions in the NHS are the worst they have ever seen.

Patients are dying in the corridors of overcrowded AE units because there are not enough beds, leading doctors warned in a letter to the Prime Minister last week.

It is too early to say exactly what is causing the high death numbers, but a bad flu season was blamed for high numbers of winter deaths last year, when 34,300 additional deaths were seen. Experts fear the flu outbreak this year is already far worse than last year.

Flu was also blamed when 43,850 extra deaths were seen in 2014/15, in a particularly bad influenza season.

HOW BAD IS THE FLU OUTBREAK THIS WINTER? 

Her death comes as flu deaths have soared by 77 per cent in just a week in England, Government figures reveal as fears of the worst outbreak in 50 years loom large.

Public Health England data also shows the killer virus has left 1,938 in hospital since October – a quarter because of ‘Aussie flu’ and half from ‘Japanese flu’.

The latest update, released today, states 85 people have lost their lives to flu already this winter, compared to the previous total of 48 recorded last week.

This is adding extra pressure onto an already stretched NHS, which is considered to be in the midst of its worst winter on record.

Scotland has seen cases of flu more than double in the past week and is now the worst affected nation in the UK, figures from Health Protection Scotland show.

It is unclear how many flu deaths have occurred in the country already this winter – but it has one of the highest number of excess deaths in Europe.

The term ‘excess deaths’ is used when more deaths have occurred than expected and the figure is calculated using data analysis from previous years.

Scotland is considered to be the only country in the UK to be suffering from ‘excess deaths’. No data exists to pinpoint the exact number of deaths in either Wales or Northern Ireland.

Figures show that for every 100,000 patients in Scotland, 107.3 have displayed ‘influenza-like’ symptoms in their GP consultations.

This is more than double the amount in Northern Ireland (52.6) and almost triple that of Wales (38.9). In contrast, England’s rate is 37.3. 

Public Health England insists the deaths seen this winter display ‘no statistically significant excess all-cause mortality’ – although they admit deaths have risen to worrying levels in Scotland, which has been hit harder by the flu outbreak.

But others have warned the pressure on the NHS could be indirectly killing people.

Renowned Oxford University academic Professor Danny Dorling, a respected expert on social demographics, in October published a major report on the excess deaths seen in previous years.

He said the driving factor was not flu, but bed blocking.

This map, based on figures from Public Health England, illustrates how often flu-like symptoms were reported to GPs last week. Orange represents the areas that have a very high amount of flu-like symptoms compared to green areas which have low numbers (no regional breakdown can be provided for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland)

He calculated up to 8,000 people a year die as a result of delayed discharges, where people are stuck in hospital even though they are medically fit to leave.

When hospitals are already full, this means others cannot get a bed and operations are cancelled. Some 55,000 operations have been cancelled in January alone in a bid to relieve pressure on the NHS.

Professor Dorling said in October: ‘This is evidence that says when you push the system too far it does have an effect.

‘The fact is that when you block beds you see overall mortality of the population go up.

‘It is not good for the population and it is not good for the health service.’

The scale of bed blocking in the NHS is the worst it has ever been, with more than 5,000 people trapped in hospital at any time.

The problem has more than doubled in the last seven years – from 55,332 bed-days lost in August 2010 to 115,742 in August 2017.

A spokesman for Public Health England said: ‘From our analysis there isn’t any significant excess mortality yet.’