ONS fixes error on its deaths dashboard

First published 3 April 2025
Updated 19 May 2025

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has corrected an error on its death statistics dashboard, after Full Fact got in touch.

The error concerned deaths from pneumonia or flu, which we have written about before.

Originally, the dashboard contained a line chart and an associated file of data, which claimed to show the number of people dying from “influenza and pneumonia”.

But strictly speaking, the chart showed the number of deaths from influenza or pneumonia, because not every death involved, or was due to, both conditions. 

This confusion can happen easily, because “influenza and pneumonia” is the name of a category in the International Classification of Diseases, which is widely used to code different causes of death. It has caused problems in the past, when the media reported this data in the mistaken belief that everyone in this category died from flu.

Helpfully, the ONS let us know on 3 April that it had fixed the page, which now refers to deaths caused by “influenza or pneumonia” instead. It fixed a similar problem a couple of years ago. 

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