Of the 6,450 records analyzed keyword search identified 473 records as pneumonia and influenza deaths, 21 being identified as false positives. Precision for keyword searching was calculated at 96%. Of the 21 false positives, 6 records correctly mentioned pneumonia in the cause of death text but their corresponding ICD-10 codes failed to provide any code related to pneumonia, while 2 records were flagged because it included the sub-string "pneumonia" in the additional cause of death field. The death literal for these two records were "bacteremia due to Streptococcus pneumonia" and "Streptococcal Pneumoniae Septicemia", The remaining 13 errors were due to the entry of the death literals; in all cases the negation of 'aspiration pneumonia' either due to: 1) 'pneumonia' being in a separate cause of death field to 'aspiration' or 2) 'pneumonia' not being directly followed by 'aspiration' in the death text (example "pneumonia due to secondary aspiration"). A total of 20 false negatives were recorded, yielding a recall of 96%. The false negatives could be generalized into two categories: 1) misspellings of pneumonia on the death certificated (n = 8) and 2) appropriate pneumonia or influenza ICD-10 code was coded but the death literals did not mention an appropriate scanned phrase (n = 12). F-measure was also calculated at 96%. A high level of agreement was seen among keyword searching and the reference standard (kappa 0.95).