The number of deaths in Australia decreased significantly in 2023 compared to previous years. The number of deaths recorded in 2023 was approximately 46 thousand, compared to about 171 thousand in 2023. Number of deaths due to road accidents In Australia, there were 1,234 road-related fatalities during the course of the year. Drivers had the highest number of road fatalities, followed by motorcyclists and passengers. In the same year, New South Wales recorded the highest number of road deaths with a total of 334 road deaths. This does represent an increase from 2022 and the second-highest number of road fatalities in the last five years. New South Wales and South Australia exhibit comparable tendencies. Number of deaths due to COVID-19 On March 1, 2020, Australia recorded its first COVID-related death. The country recorded fewer than one thousand COVID-19-related deaths within the first year of the pandemic in 2020. By 2022, Australia recorded a total of 16,284 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. Australia has recorded the deaths of 4,258 women between the ages of 80 and 89 due to COVID-19. Moreover, more men between the ages of 80 and 89 have died of COVID-19 in 2022. At the time, the number of deaths among those under the age of 50 was significantly lower than that of those in older age groups.

During the 2022-2023 reporting period, about 5.26 people died per 1,000 standard inhabitants in Australia. This figure represents a slight increase compared to the previous year.

IntroductionWith the economic recession and pandemic fatigue, milder viral variants and higher vaccine coverage along the time lay the basis for lifting anti-COVID policies to restore COVID-19 normalcy. However, when and how to adjust the anti-COVID policies remain under debate in many countries.MethodsIn this study, four countries (Singapore, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) and one region (Hong Kong SAR), that have shifted from the zero-COVID (ZC) policy to or close to the living-with-COVID (LWC) during or after the Omicron outbreak, were selected as research objects. All-cause mortality data were collected for these objects from 2009 to 2019. The expected mortality was estimated by a simple linear regression method. Excess mortality over time was calculated as the difference between the expected mortality and the observed mortality. Finally, percent excess mortality (PEM) was calculated as the excess mortality divided by the expected mortality.ResultsIn the examined four countries, PEM fluctuated around 0% and was lower than 10% most of the time under the ZC policy before 2022. After shifting to the LWC policy, all the examined countries increased the PEM. Briefly, countries with high population density (Singapore and South Korea) experienced an average PEM of 20–40% during the first half of 2022, and followed by a lower average PEM of 15–18% during the second half of 2022. For countries with low population density under the LWC policy, Australia experienced an average PEM of 39.85% during the first half of 2022, while New Zealand was the only country in our analysis that achieved no more than 10% in average PEM all the time. On the contrary, Hong Kong SAR under their ZC policy attained an average PEM of 71.14% during the first half of 2022, while its average PEM decreased to 9.19% in the second half of 2022 with LWC-like policy.ConclusionPEM under different policies within each country/region overtime demonstrated that the mortality burden caused by COVID-19 had been reduced overtime. Moreover, anti-COVID policies are suggested to control the excess mortality to achieve as low as 10% in PEM.

For the week ending May 9, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were 1,504 below the number expected, compared with 2,001 more than expected in the previous week. In late 2022, and through early 2023, excess deaths were elevated for a number of weeks, with the excess deaths figure for the week ending January 13, 2023, the highest since February 2021. In the middle of April 2020, at the height of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there were almost 12,000 excess deaths a week recorded in England and Wales. It was not until two months later, in the week ending June 19, 2020, that the number of deaths began to be lower than the five-year average for the corresponding week. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 deaths in the United Kingdom, making that year the deadliest since 1918, at the height of the Spanish influenza pandemic. As seen in the excess death figures, April 2020 was by far the worst month in terms of deaths during the pandemic. The weekly number of deaths for weeks 16 and 17 of that year were 22,351, and 21,997 respectively. Although the number of deaths fell to more usual levels for the rest of that year, a winter wave of the disease led to a high number of deaths in January 2021, with 18,676 deaths recorded in the fourth week of that year. For the whole of 2021, there were 667,479 deaths in the UK, 22,150 fewer than in 2020. Life expectancy in the UK goes into reverse In 2022, life expectancy at birth for women in the UK was 82.6 years, while for men it was 78.6 years. This was the lowest life expectancy in the country for ten years, and came after life expectancy improvements stalled throughout the 2010s, and then declined from 2020 onwards. There is also quite a significant regional difference in life expectancy in the UK. In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for example, the life expectancy for men was 81.5 years, and 86.5 years for women. By contrast, in Blackpool, in North West England, male life expectancy was just 73.1 years, while for women life expectancy was lowest in Glasgow, at 78 years.

Avoidable mortality (AM) is a simple and practical population-based method of counting untimely and unnecessary deaths from diseases for which effective public health and medical interventions are available. An excess of deaths due to preventable causes should suggest shortcomings in the healthcare system that warrant further attention. Five years of data has been aggregated for all analyses to reduce year-to-year variability in deaths, and the width of confidence intervals for areas with …Show full descriptionAvoidable mortality (AM) is a simple and practical population-based method of counting untimely and unnecessary deaths from diseases for which effective public health and medical interventions are available. An excess of deaths due to preventable causes should suggest shortcomings in the healthcare system that warrant further attention. Five years of data has been aggregated for all analyses to reduce year-to-year variability in deaths, and the width of confidence intervals for areas with small populations. Data are presented by calendar year (1 Jan to 31 Dec), consistent with the release of mortality data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Avoidable mortality (AM) is a simple and practical population-based method of\r counting untimely and unnecessary deaths from diseases for which effective\r public health and medical interventions are available. An excess of deaths due\r to preventable causes should suggest shortcomings in the healthcare system\r that warrant further attention. Five years of data has been aggregated for all\r analyses to reduce year-to-year variability in deaths, and the width of\r confidence intervals for areas with small populations. Data are presented by\r calendar year (1 Jan to 31 Dec), consistent with the release of mortality data\r by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.\r \r

Liver cirrhosis, also known as hepatic cirrhosis, was the cause of death of 6.8 per 100,000 males in Australia in 2010. Although the death rate from this condition had decreased for the male population over the preceding ten years, the rate was still almost 2.5 times greater in men than in women across the country. While there are many known causes of this disease, it typically develops as a result of chronic liver inflammation. In Australia, common causes of liver disease include hepatitis C, excessive alcohol consumption and obesity.

Alcohol consumption and liver health

While a large share of the male and female population consume alcohol, many believe that excessive drinking and alcohol abuse is a problem in the country. In fact, almost 60 percent of Australians were concerned about alcohol related health problems. The problems associated with excessive drinking vary from region to region. Recent research has shown that alcohol consumption in regional and remote areas of the country is significantly higher than in metropolitan areas. Unsurprisingly, the Northern Territory had the highest rate of alcohol-induced deaths in the country in 2017 – over four times the rate in Victoria.

This file includes the standardised separation rate ratios presented in Figs 2 and 3. (XLSX)