(Image: AP/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)

Australia has seen extraordinarily high death rates this year, and COVID-19 isn’t the sole cause, data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.

More than 4400 people died from COVID between January to May, most during the dramatic spike in infections and deaths that began in the new year and peaked on January 23. Numbers of COVID deaths returned only briefly to 2021 levels in March before taking off again as policymakers and the public collectively decided that the pandemic was over.

In the week after the federal election, COVID deaths returned to 200 a week.

But deaths from other causes have also surged. The ABS constructed a baseline for numbers of deaths based on 2017-21 deaths, leaving out 2020 because of the pandemic (with lockdowns dramatically lowering death numbers that year):

  • Deaths due to dementia were 16% above the baseline in the month of May, and 20% above the baseline from January to May
  • Deaths from cancer were 5.5% higher in May and 6% higher in the January-May period
  • Deaths from diabetes were nearly 19% higher in May and 20% higher in the January-May period
  • There ere also significantly more influenza deaths, but pneumonia deaths were actually down for comparable periods.

The overall result was about 10,700 more deaths compared with baseline periods for the January-May period, or about 16% more. The age-standardised death rate in May was also higher: 45.9 deaths per 100,000 compared with the average of 44.2.

It’s still too soon to look at excess mortality for the period — the ABS will provide that later — but the data suggests the impacts on lockdown in reducing mortality from COVID and other causes (flu, car accidents etc) may yet be balanced by deaths from chronic conditions or illnesses that received less medical attention — beyond those resulting from our collective decision that we no longer had to take COVID seriously as a threat to life.