Weekly monitoring of nation-wide number of deaths in the Netherlands (population 16 million) was set up to track events or outbreaks and estimate their impact. The system monitors reported number of deaths from all causes at 3 different time-lags: deaths reported within 1, 2 and 3 weeks (43%-98% complete). Baselines and prediction limits are calculated using a 5 year historical period and serfling type regression. For the 2012/2013 season excess deaths coincided with the exceptionally long 18 week influenza season and were considerable (6,000+ excess above baseline) compared to other seasons.