Winter deaths have reached an estimated 43,900 excess in England and Wales last year. This is 151 percent higher compared to data from 2013-2015, the biggest yearly increase since records began.
As reported by Telegraph UK, winter deaths have reached a 15-year high despite warnings and growing pressures from National Health Services. In five decades, 2012-2013 was the worst winter recorded with the coldest in March. It has resulted to 31,000 excess deaths and experts believe the worse is yet to come.
Meanwhile, reports from The Guardian reveal that experts mostly blame the lack of effectiveness of flu vaccine. The flu virus was a major cause of the increase along with the vaccine that was less effective than the previous years. Data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals that there were more deaths in women than men.
According to Claudia Wells of the ONS, there was a mismatch between the strain used to make the vaccine and the kind of flu that actually emerged.
"What we saw is at the beginning of the winter, the flu vaccine was quoted to have quite a low effectiveness, between 3% or 4%. By the end of the period, it was quoted at 34% but that is still below what we would expect, which is at least 50% effectiveness.
"It [flu] was associated with more deaths than we expected. As it wasn't a particularly cold winter we do think it was probably down to ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine."
The most vulnerable were elderly people, individuals with low income, those with mental health problems, children under five years old and pregnant women when the temperature drops below 6 degrees Celsius.
It was reported that the average temperature last winter was 4.8 degrees Celsius. That is 1.4 degrees Celsius lower in 2014-2015 however there had been cases that average temperature was lower than 5 degrees Celsius as recorded in the past decade.
Most of the deaths involved were elderly aging 75 and above. The principal cause of death in more than a third of cases was a respiratory disease. A quarter of all excess winter deaths was caused by circulatory diseases while dementia was responsible for 9,100 winter deaths. More so, winter deaths in male increased from 7,210 to 18,400 and in women from 10,250 to 25,500.
Department of health says that the increase of excess winter deaths is not unique in the United Kingdom, other European countries are also reporting an increase in excess winter death.
