Australia’s Excess Mortality More Than Halved in 2023: Report

Flowers cover the coffins at a funeral in Gatton, Queensland, on January 20, 2014. Tertius Pickard-Pool/Getty Images

A new report has shown the number of excess deaths in Australia reduced by more than half in 2023 as the country overcame the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In its latest research paper (pdf), the Actuaries Institute, a peak professional body, estimated that there were around 8,400 excess deaths in Australia last year, down from nearly 20,000 in 2022.

Excess death refers to a situation where deaths from all diagnosed causes (including COVID-19) were higher than expected numbers based on historical data.

Among the 8,400 cases, the Institute said COVID-19 was the underlying cause of 4,600 deaths (55 percent) while being a contributing factor to another 1,500 deaths (18 percent).

The remaining 2,300 cases had no mention of COVID-19 on the death certificate, but the report said many of them were likely caused by second-order impacts of the disease.

This included the impact of COVID-19 on patients with chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and dementia, as well as delays in emergency and routine care due to the high number of COVID-19 cases and influenza.

In addition, non-COVID-19 excess deaths were more common among people aged 75 for both genders and women under 45.

With the drop in the number of deaths, COVID-19 became the ninth leading cause of death in Australia in 2023, down from third in the previous year.

Compared to other countries, Australia had a relatively low excess death rate.

Among 40 countries that published excess mortality data between 2020 and 2023, Australia ranked 35 with an average rate of 5 percent, just behind France, Dominican Republic, Japan, Denmark, and New Zealand.

The figure was much higher for Latin America at over 20 percent, while the United States reported an average excess mortality rate of 10 percent in the past four years.

It is worth noting that the report’s data predominantly came from mortality statistics published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

COVID-19 Vaccines Unlikely to Cause Excess Mortality: Report

At the same time, the report said COVID-19 vaccines were highly unlikely to result in excess deaths.

“While it is not conclusive proof, the overwhelming weight of the available evidence does not point to COVID-19 vaccines as a cause of significant numbers of additional deaths,” it said.

“Of our estimate of 27,200 excess deaths across 2020-2023, just over 17,000 have been identified as being deaths from COVID-19, while fewer than 20 deaths have been identified as being caused by COVID-19 vaccination.”

The report also noted that COVID-19 vaccine deaths were a smaller fraction of the number of COVID-19 deaths that the vaccines had prevented in Australia, which was estimated to be at least 50,000.

“Our considered view is that, while there could be COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths that have not been identified as such, the number of such deaths is likely to be small, especially in the context of the estimated numbers of excess deaths and the lives saved by vaccination,” it said.

Excess Death Forecast

The Actuaries Institute forecasted that excess deaths would decrease further in the coming period.

It added that COVID-19 was likely to continue to result in some excess mortality in the future, either as a direct cause of death or as a contributor to other causes such as heart disease.

“There will also be an indirect impact, with the largest contributor likely to be the ongoing consequences of disruption to usual healthcare practices in the earlier years of the pandemic,” the report said.

“In our view, the ‘new normal’ level of mortality is likely to be higher than it would have been in the absence of the pandemic.”

Concerns About Accuracy of Data

During a recent Senate inquiry hearing, United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet questioned ABS’s representatives about the accuracy of its data.

He pointed out that COVID-19 deaths tallied by the bureau included both those who died directly due to the virus and those who died with the virus.

Specifically, he said among the 17,276 COVID-19-associated deaths reported over the past four years in Australia, only 702 (4.06 percent) had COVID-19 listed alone on the death certificate.

“So 95.94 percent of all COVID deaths reported over the past four years had pre-existing chronic conditions and or listed COVID-19 as a causal sequence of events,” Mr. Babet said.

While Lauren Moran, a director at the ABS, acknowledged that the bureau’s data included both people who died from and died with COVID-19, she said it was a “complicated issue” to figure out the cause of deaths.

She explained that Australians tended to have a lot of diseases and often died due to a combination of many factors.

“So the reason that we decided to present both together is because it is complex, it’s multifactorial,” Ms. Moran said.

“The coding of COVID-19 is actually the same as how we would code influenza. So what we’re looking for is, did COVID cause a pathway leading to death? Did it cause viral pneumonia? Did it cause acute respiratory distress syndrome?”