Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the level of winter flu (a) infection, (b) hospitalisation and (c) mortality.

From 29 November to 5 December 2021, the Respiratory DataMart laboratory surveillance data found that influenza positivity remained very low at 0.7%, with 42 of 6,267 samples testing positive. In the same period, the Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Watch sentinel surveillance data showed that the rate of hospitalisation with influenza was 0.24 per 100,000 population, which was below baseline threshold. All weekly influenza hospitalisation rates have remained below this threshold so far this season.

No recent assessment of flu mortality has been made. Data on excess deaths attributable to influenza were last published in the annual flu report for 2019/2020.