Australia records zero deaths for the first time

Deakin University epidemiologist Hassan Vally said the official weekly record of zero deaths was a “milestone”.

“This shows that increased immunity through vaccination, previous infections, improved treatments and a better understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has impacted society since the emergence of COVID-19. It shows that we have made fundamental changes,” Associate Professor Valley said.

Professor Jaya Dantas from Curtin University said the improvement in immunity was significant. “This is a good sign because it shows that there is herd immunity around the world due to people who have had COVID-19 and vaccinations.”

UNSW infectious disease modeler James Wood warned against overinterpreting the data.

“While this is encouraging data, it is almost certainly not true that there were zero deaths from COVID-19 in that week,” Associate Professor Wood said.

“Instead, our near real-time reporting system for death reporting has all but stopped working and we now have to rely on the slower ABS. [Australian Bureau of Statistics] Reports tend to be delayed by about two months. ”

Karen Cutter from the Society of Actuaries also warned of over-billing from Department of Health data.

“The graph is compiled using the date of death, making it almost impossible for someone to die and have the death registered within a week and be included in the Fed data!” Posted by Cutter on X .

the virus is still spreading

Official reporting of deaths is complicated, with different states taking different approaches during the pandemic, causing confusion. Ms Cutter warned there was “something strange” about recent death data. She said deaths and hospitalizations tend to closely match each other, but that hasn't been the case recently.

Australian Catholic University lecturer Roger Lord said the pandemic had followed a predictable path.

“In Australia, the virus appears to be following a similar pattern to that seen during the Spanish flu pandemic, with successive peaks in coronavirus cases becoming smaller with each wave,” Dr Lord said. . “This is encouraging and no doubt reflects the high level of vaccination of the Australian population.”

The world remains in the midst of the eighth wave of coronavirus infections, with experts warning that the virus is still spreading.

ANU infectious disease expert Sanjaya Senanayake said: “COVID-19 remains widespread and is not going anywhere.” “Just like the flu, it mutates. And just like the flu, a major mutation, for example into a new variant, could lead to a COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to the ABS, 21,827 of the 687,639 deaths registered between March 2020 and January 2024 were people who died due to COVID-19 or COVID-19.

Health experts are tracking the impact of the pandemic by looking at additional deaths above normal expectations.

According to the Actuarial Institute's Mortality Working Group, 8,400 more people would have died in 2023 than expected had the pandemic not occurred. Total excess deaths in the same year rose by 5%, half the level in 2022, the worst year for deaths from the pandemic in Australia.

More than half of the excess deaths (4,600) were due to COVID-19, more than 10 times the number of deaths from influenza. An additional 1,500 deaths were due to COVID-19, and the remaining 2,300 deaths had no mention of COVID-19 on their death certificates.

Actuaries standardize the number of deaths to account for the different age profiles of communities, allowing for better comparison of regional impacts.

a Recent OECD reports Standardized number of COVID-19 deaths for member states. This shows Australia is in the world's top league in terms of saving lives and is one of the six countries most successful in reducing higher than normal death rates from the pandemic.Australia was fun too. One of the strongest economic recoveries.

The Institute of Actuaries also publishes standardized death numbers for Australia. This shows that his actual standardized mortality rate in 2023 was only 0.6 percentage points lower than in 2019. This compares to non-pandemic expectations where he was 5.2 percentage points lower than in 2019.