Death rate falls
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of deaths in Australia actually fell in 2020, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
COVID-19 was the 38th ranked cause of death last year with 898 deaths. Among those people, the most commonly reported co-morbidity was dementia (270 deaths), followed by chronic heart conditions, hypertension and diabetes.
Decreases across the top-five leading causes of death and a reduction in the overall mortality rate highlighted some of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Director of Mortality Statistics at the ABS, Lauren Moran, said while the top-five causes in Australia remained the same last year, with heart disease still the leading cause of death, it was the first time the rate of death for each had all fallen since 2008-09.
Dementia (including Alzheimer’s disease) ranked second, while strokes, lung cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases rounded out the topfive. “With fewer than 900 deaths
from COVID-19 in 2020 and public health measures suppressing the spread of other infectious diseases, deaths from many causes also decreased,” she said.
In particular, there was a 24 per cent decrease in people dying from respiratory diseases, attributed mainly to the absence of inf luenza.
There were only 55 deaths due to the flu last year and none reported after July, compared with 1080 in 2019.
There were also decreases last year in deaths from preventable causes such as suicide, drug overdoses and motor vehicle accidents.