Australia’s mortality rate dropped in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with about 4% fewer deaths from all causes than expected, researchers say.

Far from SARS-CoV-2 causing excess deaths, public health restrictions — including lockdowns — seem to have reduced deaths from other causes, such as influenza and pneumonia, they have found.

This comes as a separate international study has calculated the pandemic caused 18 million excess deaths globally in its first two years — a figure three times greater than the reported tally — while only a handful of countries, including Australia, bucked the trend.   

The Australian mortality study, led by the University of Sydney, compared deaths in 2020 against expected trends based on 2015-19 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.