Ischaemic heart disease, dementia, and COVID-19. Those were the leading causes of death in 2022, according to the Actuaries Institute.
The Institute's COVID-19 Mortality Working Group analysed data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to develop its research.
It found 10,300 people died from the coronavirus in 2022 - that's 7.5 times the 1,400 deaths recorded for 2021.
Karen Cutter is the spokeswoman for the Institute’s COVID-19 Mortality Working Group. She explains how the cases developed throughout the year.
"The number of COVID deaths follows the same pattern as the number of COVID cases as you would expect. So we saw the biggest number of COVID deaths in January 2022 when we had the first big Omicron wave. We then had another peak, but quite a lot lower in sort of around April, May, then a third peak in July, and then we've had another peak at the end of the year, like right in December that then has flowed through into January as well."
These statistics have sparked discussion among health professionals around how we protect ourselves from the disease in a post-lockdown world.
Infectious Diseases physician Dr Paul Griffin says Australians have become complacent.
"We certainly don't want to alarm people excessively and we're certainly not recommending any of those harsher measures that protected people early on like border restrictions and lockdowns. What we need people to do is just understand that this virus remains a significant risk and the steps that we want people to do to address that is to be up to date with their vaccines, and we have improved vaccines that make a huge difference, but they're not going to help if they're still sitting in fridges rather than into people's arms. And we still want people to take simple steps to reduce the risk of getting this infection, including things like being mindful of social distancing and basic hygiene principles like hand hygiene."
Vulnerable people are being urged by health professionals to stay up to date on their vaccinations.
