Australian Excess Deaths Surge While COVID-19 Deaths Down—Could there be Link to COVID-19 Vaccination?
Recently the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest “Provisional Mortality Statistics” a report revieing provisional deaths data as part of an ongoing effort to measure changes in patterns of mortality. This latest period is for the entire year of 2022. The agency Down Under reports there were 190,394 deaths that occurred by December 31, 2022, representing a 25,235 (15.3%) excess over a historical average.
When looking at “age-standardized death rate” or “SDR” for December 2022 this equaled 43.2 deaths per 100,000 people, well above the baseline average of 40.9. The Australian government reports 707 deaths due to COVID-19 in January 2021, down from 924 that occurred from the novel pathogen in December.
Near Universal COVID-19 Vaccination
The data just isn’t easily explainable. The nation is nearly fully vaccinated against COVID-19. 97% of the eligible population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. With 95.2% of the eligible population fully vaccination.
So, What’s going On?
The Australian agency provides a preliminary overview of mortality at the all-cause level for all deaths as well as by selected cause for doctor-certified deaths in 2022. There are some deaths that occurred in 2022 that have not yet been registered and received by the ABS. These deaths will be included in future reports. Causes of death are not presented for coroner-referred deaths (except for COVID-19) due to the time required to complete coronial investigations. More complete analysis on deaths and causes of death registered in 2022 will be published in Deaths, Australia and Causes of Death, Australia in late 2023.
There were 190,394 deaths that occurred in 2022 and were registered by 28 February 2023. All months had a higher number of deaths compared to the preceding 3 years.
Could the mass COVID-19 vaccination program be linked to this excess death rate? Could it be some other explanation?
COVID-19 deaths are down from a year earlier (although they have been on an upswing in the last calendar quarter of 2022), yet the excess death rate surged.