Influenza cases, hospital admissions and deaths (FOI)

Request

Please provide the statistics from years 2015 to 2022 for the following:

A

Confirmed influenza cases.

B

Influenza deaths.

C

Hospital admissions from influenza.

Response

A

As Jersey only carries out flu tests on a relatively small number of people, three-years of data have been combined for a more reliable dataset, and to prevent disclosure of personal information.

From 1 October 2015 the number of confirmed positive Influenza cases are:

The information requested in relation to 2021/2022 is due to be published in September 2022. Article 36 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Figures including data for the flu season 2021/2022 will be published in-line with the Public Health Intelligence Publication Release

B

Deaths have been digitally registered since 1st January 2018 and detailed statistics can be extracted from that date only.

The data prior to 1 January 2018 is held in separate volumes of parish paper registers. To extract the data would require the manual search of every page of all 12 Parish Registers for each year requested. Each year there are 800 to 900 death registrations made across all 12 parishes. It is estimated that this would take more than 12.5 hours to complete Therefore Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

From 1 January 2018 the number of deaths where Influenza is registered as a cause of death on the death registration are:

C

The table below gives the total number of admissions to Jersey General Hospital per year from 2015 – 2021 in which a patient was diagnosed with influenza, irrespective of the presenting condition or main condition treated in that admission.  

Coded data, which has been used to identify all admissions in which a diagnosis of influenza was made, is incomplete for 2022 at this time. Though this information will be available in individual medical records, examining the case notes of every inpatient admission in 2022 to-date would exceed the timescales prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. As such, it is not currently possible to provide the hospital admission data requested for 2022. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied. 

The following ICD-10 diagnosis codes were included for the data extract: 

No results were returned for J09.X. 

No results were returned for A93.1, which would be the code attributed to the condition ‘summer influenza of Italy’. 

No results were returned for P00.2 in relation to influenza. 

Articles applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations. 

(2) Despite paragraph (1), a scheduled public authority may still supply the information requested on payment to it of a fee determined by the authority in the manner prescribed by Regulations for the purposes of this Article.

(3) Regulations may provide that, in such circumstances as the Regulations prescribe, if two or more requests for information are made to a scheduled public authority –

(a) by one person; or

(b) by different persons who appear to the scheduled public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.

Article 36 - Information intended for future publication

(1) Information is qualified exempt information if, at the time when the request for the

information is made, the information is being held by a public authority with a view to its

being published within 12 weeks of the date of the request.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground

must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant –

(a) of the date when the information will be published;

(b) of the manner in which it will be published; and

(c) by whom it will be published.

(3) In this Article, “published” means published –

(a) by a public authority; or

(b) by any other person.

Public Interest Test

Article 36 is a qualified exemption, which means that a public interest test has to be undertaken to examine the circumstances of the case and decide whether, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. 

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure 

• disclosure of the information would support transparency and promote accountability to the general public. 

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information 

• It is intended to publish the data within 12 weeks of the receipt of this request on www.gov.je. The information is currently being collated prior to publication and therefore it is not possible to release it at this stage.