COVID-19 ranks as third leading cause of death: ABS
It was the first time an infectious disease made the top five in 50 years, the statistics show.
COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Australia in 2022 after ischaemic heart disease and dementia, with new data showing it accounted for more than one in 20 deaths.
Out of nearly 191,000 deaths recorded last year, about 9600 — or 5.2% — were due to COVID-19, according to the latest set of mortality data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
It is also the first time that an infectious disease has cracked the top five leading causes of death since 1970, when both influenza and pneumonia were ranked fifth.
“Broken down by sex, we saw that COVID-19 was the third ranked cause of death for males (5484) and the fourth ranked cause of death for females (4375),” said the bureau’s head of mortality statistics, Lauren Moran.
