Our latest on excess deaths in Australia, covering all cause mortality to 30 April, plus excess from COVID-19 only to 31 July. #Covid19Aus
TLDR: 13% excess (+6,800 deaths) Jan-Apr 22.
8% excess (+3,500 deaths) from Covid only May-July.
Covid third leading cause of death in 2022.
Total excess mortality for the month of April 2022 estimated at 9% (+1,200 deaths).
More than half is due to doctor-certified COVID-19 deaths. Other unspecified causes and coroner-referred deaths (which include some COVID-19 deaths) also made a significant contribution.
With January at 20% excess mortality, February at 15% and March at 7%, this takes total excess mortality for the first four months of 2022 to 13% (+6,800 deaths).
Deaths were above the above the 97.5th percentile for all but one week of 2022 so far.
In the first four months of 2022 just over half of excess deaths are from doctor-certified COVID-19 (+3,600 deaths).
Doctor-certified deaths from heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes and dementia were all higher than predicted (by 5%-11%).
Doctor-certified deaths from the large catch-all category of “other diseases” were higher than predicted (+1,400 deaths).
ABS data shows that in the first 4 months of 2022, there were 714 deaths in people who were COVID-19 positive at death but where COVID-19 was not the primary cause. i.e. COVID-19 was potentially a contributory factor in around 1/4 of the excess mortality from non-COVID-19 causes
What else could be causing the non-COVID-19 excess deaths?
(Do not tell me these deaths are due to vaccines. Do not tweet graphs at me that "prove" its vaccines. Do not tweet youtube videos at me that tell me its vaccines. My blocking finger is at the ready!
Vaccine-related deaths will be the subject of a future thread).
What do we know beyond April?
Daily surveillance reports in the month of July 2022 are the highest yet recorded. In the last three months, around 4,600 deaths from or with COVID-19 have been reported (1,300 in May, 1,400 in June, 1,900 in July).
Of these 4,600 deaths, we estimate that 76% will be deaths from (not with) COVID-19.
Thus we estimate that COVID-19 deaths alone will result in excess mortality of around 8% (+3,500) for the months of May-July 2022, with overall excess mortality likely to be higher than this.
Combining our detailed excess death estimates to 30 April with our preliminary estimate of excess deaths due to COVID-19 only for May-July 2022, our conservative estimate is that Australia had experienced around 9,200 excess deaths across the pandemic by the end of July 2022.
Deaths from COVID-19 are expected to reach 7,100 for the first 7 months of 2022 (3,600 doctor-certified deaths Jan-April plus 3,500 deaths May-July).
This would put COVID-19 as the third leading cause of death, behind ischaemic heart disease and dementia.
The end. Any questions?
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In advance of our work on excess deaths coming out in the next day or so, and with quite a few new followers, I thought I'd do a thread on how we calculate our baseline predicted values for 2022, and how these compare to what the ABS uses. #COVID19Aus
What did we do? We used ABS standardised death rates (SDRs) for each cause of death as the basis of our projections. The SDRs allow for changes in both population size and age mix. We built in trends for mortality improvement. We then converted that back to numbers of deaths.
What do ABS do? They use the average number of deaths in 2017-19+21 without any adjustment for population changes or trend.
A (long) thread on reporting of Covid deaths in Australia.
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding out there about reporting of Covid deaths, so I am writing this thread to hopefully dispel some myths (and so I can link people to it rather than repeating myself!)
This is based on my understanding from dealing with death statistics in different circumstances. I am not a medical profession, so have no first-hand experience of how deaths are certified. If anyone out there on #MedTwitter would like to correct me, please do so.
First off, we have daily surveillance reporting. The purpose of this data is to provide an indication of how the pandemic is trending. Note that data has been collected in this form for years for other communicable diseases such as flu, measles, etc, and is ...
Have NSW hospitalisations hit the previous peak of January 2022?
A thread/ #CovidAus#covidnsw
On the face of it, it looks like not. However the January peak of 2,943 in hospital with COVID-19 used a different definition of "hospitalised with COVID" compared with the current wave
Back in January, the definition of "hospitalised with COVID" was if the time between COVID symptoms and admission date was less than 28 days.
This changed on 3 Feb 2022 to be less than 14 days, resulting in less people counting as being hospitalised for COVID.
Our latest assessment of excess deaths in Australia. This covers excess deaths from all causes to 31 March, plus excess deaths from COVID-19 only until 30 June.
A thread/ #CovidAus#ExcessDeaths#ExcessMortality
Total excess mortality for March 2022 estimated at 6% (+800 deaths).
Almost half of the excess is due to doctor-certified COVID-19 deaths. Other unspecified causes and coroner-referred deaths (which includes some COVID-19 deaths) also made a significant contribution.
With January at 19% excess mortality and February at 14%, this takes total excess mortality for the first quarter of 2022 to 13% (+5,100 deaths).
Only one week in 2022 has been close to predicted; all other weeks have been above the 97.5th percentile.
A little bit more on the census/vaccination rates. There is something very odd going on with the vaccination rates at older ages...
A thread/
Up until now, the vaccination rates have been calculated by dividing the number of people vaxxed by the estimated resident population (ERP) at 30 June 2020. With the last census performed in 2016, the 2020 estimates was getting a little rubbery.
And with the main rollout of first doses mainly happening from Feb 2021 to Oct 2021, it is more correct to use the ERP at June 2021 rather than June 2020.
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).