Cases have fallen by 19% since last week, and this has been pretty much across the board for all age groups.
The data on numbers of people admitted to hospital or ICU has improved since two weeks ago, but there is still the backdating issue with Figure 1 (the latest week is revised upwards in the subsequent week's report).
Looking just at Figure 1, the number admitted to hospital in the week ending 4 June is down 15% on those admitted in the week ending 28 May
But if you compare the data in Table 1 in both weeks, the number admitted to hospital is down only 3%. In these next few graphs, I use data from Table 1 as it is comparing apples with apples.
This shows hospitalisations by age band, and I've left out the week ending 21 May as the data was rubbish. Good to see hospitalisations are generally going down for the oldest age bands
By vax status, they are now reporting on 4th doses and have separated out no dose and unknown (yay!). Ignoring the w/e 21 May, those hospitalised with 3+ doses continues to trend upward
Another 86 deaths this week.
The proportion of deaths from aged care residents has been just over 40% for most of the last two month
ED presentations for flu-like illnesses have surpassed 2019 levels, and much earlier in the year
BA.2 remains dominant, but BA.4 and BA.2 growing rapidly
ends/
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The Mortality Working Group has today published our Research Paper covering excess mortality in 2020-2023. actuaries.asn.au/public-policy-…
It is a massive paper (100+ pages), so I'm not going to cover off all of it!
This thread gives a taster of what is included in the paper, and is aimed at those who may want to delve further into the nitty-gritty.
There are four main sections of our paper (plus an into in section 1).
Section 2 cover excess mortality for Australia. This formally documents the excess mortality blogs we published throughout 2023. For those who have been following me, the numbers will look familiar.
The Mortality Working Group of the Actuaries Institute has released their latest estimate of excess mortality for Q1 2024.
TLDR: excess mortality is 1%, noting this is measured against the new baseline. actuaries.digital/2024/07/10/exc…
Our new baseline measures 2024 mortality against 2023 (after allowing for some mortality improvement), and includes and allowance for COVID-19 deaths.
Deaths from all causes have been within the 95% confidence interval in each of the first thirteen weeks of 2024, although they have been towards the top of that range for three of the last four weeks of March.
"Australia appears to have had at least a week where no COVID-associated deaths were recorded for the first time in more than two years."
This is simply not true. The statement is based on this Fed Health graph.
Yes, it does show a 7-day average of zero deaths for the most recent data points. But this ignores the fact that the graph is compiled using date of death, and it is almost impossible for someone to die, have their death registered, and included in the Fed data within a week!
The Mortality Working Group of the Actuaries Institute has released our estimate of excess mortality for the full year 2023.
TLDR: Excess mortality for 2023 is 5% (95% CI: 3%-7%) or +8,400 deaths.
A thread/ actuaries.digital/2024/04/05/exc…
Note that our expected number of deaths (baseline) is our expectation had the pandemic not happened.
The baseline allows for changes in the age and size composition of the population over time, plus allows for pre-pandemic mortality trend to continue.
We finished the year with deaths being much higher than expected for each of the four weeks in December (as they were in November).
Australian deaths counts: surveillance vs death certificates.
For some time now I have been quizzically looking at the death surveillance reporting, thinking the numbers looked too low.
A thread/
This is because of the relationship between hospitalisations and deaths.
Normally deaths track hospital admissions quite closely, but with a little bit of a lag. But for Dec23 and Jan24, this relationship changed - deaths are lower than expected based on hospitalisations.
A few theories were floating around about why (eg. JN.1 less severe), but it also didnt make sense to me from looking at the Vic death reporting, and knowing the Vic wave was a bit earlier than the rest of Aust. Things just werent stacking up nicely.
The Mortality Working Group* of the Actuaries Institute has estimated Australian excess mortality to 30 November 2023.
A thread/
* re-branded as we plan to look at more than just Covid
Total excess mortality for the first 11 months of 2023 is estimated at 5% (95% confidence interval: 3% to 7%).
This is about 7,400 more deaths than expected if the pandemic had not happened.
This compares to excess mortality for 2022 of 11%.
With only one month of data still to be reported for 2023, we expect that excess mortality for the full year 2023 will be about half the level of 2022.