While deaths with COVID-19 as their underlying cause have fallen from previous peaks, they remain higher than those caused by flu and pneumonia.
While 90% of deaths involving COVID-19 in the U.K. in spring 2020 and early part of 2021 were due to the condition, the same was true for 62% of COVID-19-related deaths in the week ending April 1st, 2022.
Medical News Today contacted six experts to discuss how COVID-19, pneumonia, and the flu may be compared and how the public may act on the findings.
The ONS report was published on May 23rd, 2022.
For their analysis, the ONS used data from death certificates to count deaths from COVID-19 and other causes. This, they note, is different from public health measures that include deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test.
They used the term “due to COVID-19” to refer only to deaths caused by COVID-19. When taking into account all the deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not, they used the term “involving COVID-19.” The ONS researchers used the same terms for flu and pneumonia.
From their analysis, the ONS noted that while deaths from COVID-19 occurred more evenly across age groups than flu and pneumonia, the elderly were more likely to be affected.
They noted that between 2020 and 2022, 73.7% of deaths due to flu and pneumonia occurred among those 80 years and over, compared to 58.3% of deaths due to COVID-19.
“The elderly do still make the largest portion of deaths,” Dr. Fade Youssef, a board-certified pulmonologist, internist, and critical care specialist at MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center in Long Beach, CA, told MNT.
However, early on, COVID-19 did cause a much [higher] rate of deaths in younger age groups, with the sharpest rise in those aged 40 to 79 — meaning that COVID-19 posed a serious health risk to a young age group that [is] typically shielded from the worst outcomes when it comes to flu or pneumonia,” he added.
The ONS also found that there have been more deaths due to COVID-19 than flu in every year since 1929. They noted that 73,766 deaths in 2020 were due to COVID-19, and 67,258 in 2021, while there were 73,212 deaths due to flu in 1929.
Deaths due to flu, the researchers noted, also fell to record lows since COVID-19 started, to under 20,000 per year. Although deaths due to flu and pneumonia increased in the most recent winter, they remained below pre-COVID pandemic levels.
“These are all disease entities affecting the lungs and your ability to breathe and keep oxygen getting to your body and vital organs,” noted Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Control and Prevention at The University of Kansas Medical Center.
“These infections and our immune response can significantly reduce the proper functioning of our lungs leading to respiratory failure and death,” he told MNT.
Dr. Hawkinson noted, however, that there might be limitations in defining the conditions:
“I would like to point out that ‘pneumonia’ is merely an infection of the lower respiratory tract, i.e. the lungs. This infection may be caused by a virus (such as SARS-COV-2), a fungus, or a bacteria — I am assuming this article is referring to bacterial pneumonia, but it’s unclear if they are including other non-influenza, non-SARS-COV-2 viruses or fungal causes of pneumonia.”
Deaths from COVID-19 and flu in the US
Dr. David Cutler, family medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, told MNT that it is also important to note that COVID-19 and flu affect the body in different ways:
“COVID-19 and flu are two very different diseases, with very different effects on the human body, and certainly very different levels of fatal outcomes.”
“So, by comparison, in the 2018–2019 flu season, before COVID-19 arrived, there were about 34,000 flu deaths in the U.S., an average year. In 2019–2020, just as covid was hitting and our behavior about masking and distancing changed, there were 22,000 flu deaths.”
“And from October 2020 until July 2021 when mask mandates and lockdowns were in effect, there were only 748 documented flu deaths.”
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