Deaths due to COVID-19, influenza and RSV in Australia - 2022 - May 2024

The ABS have reported extensively on deaths involving COVID-19 during the pandemic. The ABS mortality data is sourced from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and is separate from the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System. While the registration-based deaths data takes longer to receive and process this dataset has provided important supplementary information to the surveillance system data. 

As the pandemic has progressed, there has been a re-emergence of other acute respiratory diseases. To reflect this, the ABS will now report on the number of monthly deaths due to COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). In this article, these viral diseases will be referred to collectively as deaths due to acute respiratory infections. Due to the higher number of deaths due to COVID-19 more detailed analysis will be included for this cause. 

All data presented in this article is provisional. It is expected that numbers of deaths due to these causes will increase for more recent time periods as more death registrations are received by the ABS. 

The table below shows the number of acute respiratory associated deaths reported on a medical certificate of cause of death by month and year. An acute respiratory associated death is one where the viral disease has either directly caused the death (the virus has caused terminal complications such as pneumonia) or the person has died with the virus (a person has died from another cause but the viral illness still contributed significantly to death). 

• COVID-19 has been the leading cause of acute respiratory infection mortality across 2022-2024. 
• Over the first four months of 2024, deaths involving COVID-19 have been decreasing, deaths involving influenza have been relatively stable and deaths involving RSV have been increasing. Numbers of deaths due to these causes are expected to increase for all months in 2024, but especially for May.  
• Deaths involving influenza and RSV were higher in each of the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2022 and 2023. 
• Deaths associated with COVID-19 remain lower this year than their peak in 2022.
• While deaths associated with COVID-19 were lower in January 2024 compared with January 2023, numbers over these months in February and March have been comparable across these years. 

The ABS codes an underlying cause of death (UCOD) for all deaths in the national mortality dataset. The underlying cause of death is defined as the disease, condition or external event that started the chain of events leading to death. International coding rules are applied to disease and conditions appearing on the medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) to assign the ucod. A disease or condition must be certified on the MCCD to be coded by the ABS. If COVID-19, influenza or RSV is listed as the underlying cause of death, the death is considered to be been caused by the virus. 

The following table shows the number of deaths due to acute respiratory diseases since 2022.

• The number of deaths from COVID-19 have been much lower in 2024 than in 2022. Deaths from COVID-19 in February and March 2024 have been comparable to the same months in 2023.
• The number of deaths due to influenza in the first three months of 2024 have been higher than in 2023 and 2022, but are comparable to levels recorded in the same months of 2019.

The table below shows the number of acute-respiratory associated deaths where the person has died with the virus (a person has died from another cause but the viral illness still contributed significantly to death).

• COVID-19 and Influenza are more likely to be assigned as the underlying causes of death rather than a contributing factor (i.e. a person died with the virus). The opposite is true for RSV - it is more likely to be listed as a significant contributor to death. To wholly monitor the affects of RSV on mortality, deaths with RSV should be taken into consideration. 
• There have been more deaths with RSV in the first three months of 2024 than in 2022 or 2023. 
• There have been fewer deaths with COVID-19 in the first three months of 2024 than in 2022 or 2023.

• More males have died from COVID-19 compared to females across 2022-2024. 
• Those aged over 90 years are the only age group to consistently record more deaths of females than males from COVID-19. Nearly two thirds of Australia's population of persons aged over 90 years are female.
• More males (65) than females (56) have died from influenza in 2024. The reverse is true for influenza deaths in 2022 and 2023.
• All three of these acute respiratory infections are more likely to cause death in older age groups than younger age groups. For males, those aged 80-89 years had the highest numbers of deaths for all of these acute respiratory infections each year with the exception of RSV in 2024. For females, those aged over 90 years recorded more deaths than those aged 80-89 years with the exception of RSV in 2022 and influenza in 2023. 

• As the most populous state, New South Wales generally records the highest numbers of deaths for acute respiratory infections (for example, since 2022, NSW has consistently recorded the highest number of deaths from COVID-19). For RSV deaths in 2024, this trend has changed with NSW recording less deaths (10 deaths) than Queensland (27) and Victoria (12).
• Queensland and New South Wales both have recorded 37 influenza deaths in 2024. 
• COVID-19 has caused more deaths than influenza and RSV across 2022-2024 in all jurisdictions. 
• In 2024, Queensland has recorded more deaths due to influenza and RSV than Victoria.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are at heightened risk of more severe outcomes from COVID-19. There are several reasons for this, including higher rates of socioeconomic disadvantage, higher rates of chronic diseases and limited access to culturally safe health care.

This section presents information on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died from COVID-19 (where it directly caused conditions leading to death) or with COVID-19 (where it was a contributing factor but did not directly cause death). For most of the analysis deaths from and with COVID-19 are presented together due to small numbers of deaths.

While there have been deaths recorded in all jurisdictions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. However, the rest of this analysis focusses on deaths registered in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory only. Only these five states and territories have evidence of a sufficient level of Indigenous identification and high enough numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths to support mortality analysis.

There were 26 deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people involving COVID-19 in the first four months of 2024. This is lower than the first four months in both 2023 and 2022. Throughout 2023 there were fewer deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in all months compared with 2022. 

There were 392 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had COVID-19 certified as a cause of death across the five jurisdictions. Of these people:

• 247 died due to COVID-19. This is where the virus caused complications that led directly to death. A further 145 people died with COVID-19. This is where another disease caused the terminal complication causing death but COVID-19 was a contributing factor.
• The age-standardised death rate for deaths from COVID-19 and deaths with COVID-19 are slightly lower for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females than males. The rate difference for deaths from COVID-19 and deaths with COVID-19 between males and females is lower for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than for non-Indigenous people.
• Of those who died from or with COVID-19, a higher proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people died with COVID-19 as a contributing factor compared with non-Indigenous people (37.0% compared with 25.5%).
• The mortality rate from COVID-19 is 1.7 times higher in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people compared to non-Indigenous people.
• For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females, the rate of mortality with COVID-19 is 2.7 times higher than that of non-Indigenous females.