How COVID-19 Has Affected Mortality in 2020 to 2023
A Research Paper on how COVID-19 affected mortality in Australia from 2020 to 2023.
There were 8,400 more deaths in Australia in 2023 than predicted had the pandemic not occurred – less than half of the almost 20,000 excess deaths estimated for 2022.
The new research paper from the Mortality Working Group explores how COVID-19 affected mortality in Australia from 2020 to 2023 and how Australia’s experience compares with the rest of the world.
In brief:
- The steep decline in excess deaths in 2023 was primarily due to the number of people dying from COVID-19 falling to 4,600 in 2023 from 10,300 in 2022.
- While Australia’s excess mortality rate had dropped substantially, it remains significantly higher than the 1-2% excess observed in years of high flu deaths prior to the pandemic.
- When analysing the excess mortality of 40 countries from 2020 to 2023, Australia’s excess mortality over the four-year period (5%) was low by global standards (11%).
It's encouraging that each successive COVID-19 wave has, so far, resulted in fewer deaths than the previous one. However, we think that COVID-19 is likely to cause some excess mortality for several years to come, either as a direct cause of death or a contributing factor to other causes such as heart disease. In our view, the 'new normal' level of mortality is likely to be higher than it would have been if we hadn't had the pandemic.
— Mortality Working Group
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