Covid killing 25 a day on average in Australia, as people stop getting booster shots

Far more people are dying from Covid than the flu. While we may want to forget all about the virus that turned our lives upside down, it’s not going away. Read our special report on why the pandemic is far from over.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

Covid is killing on average 25 people in Australia every day with more than half the nation not getting any form of booster shot in the past six months.

In the latest national snapshot of the virus, four in 10 aged care residents have still not received their latest jab despite authorities warning they remained vulnerable to infection.

The Covid “health emergency” might have been formally declared over in May by the UN’s World Health Organisation and death rates have tapered off.

But three and a half years on from the outbreak, its lethality continues to ravage families, with more than 5000 reported deaths in Australia so far this year - including direct deaths or “Covid related” - and up to 1400 patients currently in hospital. It remains our third largest national killer.

The 5000 figure comes from Covid Live, which has compiled all the government numbers since the start of the pandemic.

A Covid-19 patient in patient ICU. Picture: Chris Pavlich.

This exceeds influenza death rates. In 2017, regarded as one of the worst flu seasons in recent years, there were 1255 deaths. Last year there were 308 deaths linked to influenza.

“What surprises me is that deaths at such a massive rate in the country largely seem to go uncommented these days, for me that’s the big surprise,” Australian Medical Association (AMA) chief Professor Steve Robson said.

“If you think about it for something that continues to take such an enormous toll on Australian lives, it has really dropped out of a lot of the discourse across our society, the media and social media … I think maybe as a community and with government leadership we need to look again at how we are providing information, what we are doing to remind people in aged care – we might not stop you getting Covid but we can certainly reduce the risk you will get really ill and or die. That message needs to be refreshed a bit.”

Aged care residents continue to be hardest hit with Victoria alone dealing with 30 current outbreaks.

Despite ongoing lockdowns due to outbreaks in homes more than 1056 residents have succumbed to the virus so far this year.

That’s more than the combined total for 2020 (686) and 2021 (226). In 2022, 3852 living in aged care homes died due to Covid.

Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) CEO Craig Gear said the booster crisis in aged care needed to be tackled urgently.

“It’s concerning that we still have around 40 per cent of people in aged care that are not up-to-date with their boosters,” Mr Gear said.

“While providers have good pathways for flu, there needs to be a rolling schedule for Covid because people are eligible at different times.

“Even if it is just one person in the home who needs the Covid vaccine they should get it.”

Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler said vaccinations have proven to work in aged care settings and urged people to get their boosters.

“Any death from Covid-19 is a tragedy, but we can take hope from the fact that our clinicians have made great strides in preventing severe disease,” Mr Butler said.

“At the start of the pandemic, one in three cases in residential aged care resulted in death.

“In the most recent summer wave, that had fallen to just one in 40 cases.”

Leading infectious diseases physician Professor Peter Collignon agreed Covid and variants were with us to stay and those in aged care remained most at risk.

Infectious Diseases physician and microbiologist Dr Peter Collignon at the Senate Inquiry into Covid-19 at Parliament House in Canberra, Thursday, June 25, 2020. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas).

“The emphasis now in my view is it is here, it is not going away, it will probably be worse in winter than summer but it is here all the time and the people we have to make sure are vaccinated with boosters are those over the age of 80 particularly because that is where the deaths are occurring.

“The last figure I saw was something like half the residents in nursing homes have not had their fifth booster … we are not targeting that age population enough.”

According to the AMA, more than 16.5 million Australians had not received a Covid-19 booster shot in more than six months.

Shadow aged care spokeswoman Anne Ruston accused the Albanese Government of having abandoned older Australians.

“This Government is overseeing unacceptably low vaccination rates in residential aged care,” Ms Ruston said.

Some people are still choosing to wear masks. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

University of Sydney academic in vaccinology and epidemiology Professor Robert Booy said despite current rates, the country was in the best position it could be.

In the last 18 months each Covid wave had been smaller than the one before but he warned it was with us to stay.

“What influenza did after the 1918 pandemic and the 2009 pandemic was that it settled into a pattern of coming back every winter … virus is able to mutate, their progeny – their babies – are able to look a little different from their parents and therefore evade some of our immunity so it’s likely Covid will evolve in a way similar somewhat to the flu and potentially come back each winter with a slightly different variant for which we hope to have developed a vaccine that’s nearly good enough.”

‘WE’RE ALL GETTING SICKER’

Australia has seen a significant rise in common infections with waning community immunity, ironically in part because of previous Covid restrictions.

“What we have seen as a lesson since we opened up over the last year or so is that there has been a large increase in infection – not of Covid for which we have got good immunity – but of almost any other well known infection,” top infectious diseases paediatrician Professor Robert Booy said.

“There’s been large increases and examples include influenza, RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus), among viruses and bacteria, meningococcal and streptococcal and pneumococcal, secondary infections.

Professor Robert Booy, leading Australian infectious disease physicians. Supplied

“So we’ve suddenly got a whole host of infections that have come back and that are peaking and causing trouble and for which we need to implement good public health controls including vaccination where available.”

Dr Booy said for two or so years people did not get exposure to natural infection due to social distancing and lockdowns and immunities waned.

“So that now that they are being exposed their immune systems are being challenged and they are being exposed at a level they don’t need to be because people have got complacent … the general public has gotten very lax and some people have forgotten the measures we took to prevent not just Covid but a whole host of infections.”

In 2022, the Actuaries Institute found there were 20,200 “excess deaths” with about 13,000 Covid and Covid-related deaths and more than 7000 non-Covid above the expected annual national mortality rate.

Originally published as Covid killing 25 a day on average in Australia, as people stop getting booster shots