Incorrect. 64,000 people died in January 2018 in England and Wales of all causes. Public Health England estimates that across the 2017/18 flu season there were around 22,000 deaths associated with flu in England.
A block of text making comparisons between the number of deaths from flu and the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic has been shared on Facebook.
The text claims that “a real pandemic would be self-evident” with “bodies piling up on the street”. It adds: “The flu killed 64,000 people in this country in 2018, and you didn't bat an eye.”
This figure for flu deaths is far too high, and Covid-19 meets the definition of a “real pandemic”.
What counts as a pandemic?
The outbreak of Covid-19 across the world certainly meets definitions of pandemics that we’ve come across.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says flu pandemics specifically are characterised by human-to-human spread of the virus in at least two countries within the same WHO region and “community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region.”
The Oxford Dictionary of Epidemiology says a pandemic is “An epidemic occurring worldwide or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries, and usually affecting a large number of people.”
While Covid-19 is not the deadliest disease the world has ever seen, in part the death toll has been kept down due to worldwide restrictions on behaviour that could cause the virus to spread more quickly.
And while the UK has not seen incidents of “bodies piling up on the street”, if that is the Facebook user’s criteria for defining a pandemic, it has arguablybeenmet elsewhere in the world.
How many people die of flu?
As for the claim that the flu killed 64,000 people in the UK (where the post’s author says they are based) in 2018, this is incorrect.
The only reference we’ve found to a UK figure like that in connection with the 2018 flu outbreak, is that in January 2018 around 64,000 people died in England and Wales, at the time the highest monthly total since 2006.
But this figure was for England and Wales and covered deaths from all causes, not just flu.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here.
For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false
because the flu did not kill 64,000 people in 2018.
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