Three thousand more Australians died in the first two months of this year than expected, but it wasn’t all down to the Omicron wave, a new report says.

The Australia’s Health 2022 report, published on Thursday, found death rates in January and February were 35% higher than expected, with COVID-19 blamed for about half of the excess deaths.

Coronary heart disease and dementia were the next highest causes of the excess death, accounting for roughly 10% each, revealed the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report.

The last time Australia had a major spike in excess deaths of the same scale was during 2017’s severe influenza season, but even that only caused a 15% rise in excess deaths, the authors said.