31 January 2023
Jai Ganesh
[FYI request #21412 email]
Tēnā koe Jai
Your Official Information Act request, reference: HNZ00008821
Thank you for your email of 13 December 2022, asking for the following which has been
considered under the Of icial Information Act 1982 (the Act):
“Could you please provide for the period 2016 - 2022:
- the number of cases for the Flu and related (Adenovirus , Flu A / B , Rinovirus) in NZ
- the number of hospitalisations for the same
broken down by month.”
On 20 December 2022 your request was transferred in part to the Coroner’s office regarding “
the
number of deaths of the same.”
- the number of cases for the Flu and related (Adenovirus , Flu A / B , Rinovirus) in NZ
Te Whatu Ora is unable to provide you with this information as it is held in notes on individual case
files. In order to provide you with this information, Te Whatu Ora staff would have to manually
review individual client files. As such, we refuse your request under section 18(f) of the Act. The
greater public interest is in the effective and efficient administration of the public service.
We have considered whether Te Whatu Ora would be able to respond to your request given extra
time, or the ability to charge for the information requested. I have concluded that, in either case, Te
Whatu Ora’s ability to undertake its work would stil be prejudiced.
You may find it helpful to refer to the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), who
tracks virus activity and severity in New Zealand
: https://www.esr.cri.nz/our-
services/consultancy/flu-surveil ance-and-research/.
You can also refer to the flu tracke
r https://info.flutracking.net/, however please note these rely on
self-reporting and therefore may not accurately reflect the total number of flu cases in the
community.
- the number of hospitalisations for the same
Please see
Appendix 1 for influenza publicly funded hospital discharges from 2016 to 2022.
Note: At the time of pul ing this data the nominal reporting deadline for hospital discharge data had
not yet passed for November 2022, therefore the November may be incomplete.
If you have any questions, you can contact us a
t [email address].
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Te Whatu Ora may
proactively release a copy of this response on our website. Al requester data, including your name
and contact details, wil be removed prior to release. The released response wil be made available
on our website.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Kieran Houser
Group Manager – Hospital and Specialist Services
TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
