ACT Health has decided to stop sharing the age ranges of COVID deaths in a move to match the reporting of other notifiable diseases.
The change comes after the Health Directorate's weekly report revealed a patient in his 40s had died, making him the youngest-COVID related death this year. ACT Health did not report whether the man was immunocompromised or had any comorbidities due to patient privacy.
Officials were notified of his death between June 21 and 27, but said he did not die during this period. They reported his age range and sex in the weekly respiratory surveillance report along with three other COVID-related deaths - a woman in her 80s and two women in their 90s. The deaths were reported last month, a period which recorded the highest monthly COVID activity this year with 844 PCR-confirmed infections.
In the following weekly report, from June 28 to July 4, ACT Health stated two people had died but did not include their age range like it had done in reports published since March 2023. ACT Health was contacted for comment as the report did not state a reason for the lack of age-related information.
A spokesperson told The Canberra Times the Health Directorate was following a new process and the change in reporting aligned "more closely" with the reporting of other notifiable diseases. Influenza and the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are examples of other notifiable respiratory diseases.
"ACT Health regularly reviews and updates public reporting processes," they said. "[The change] is consistent with the approach taken nationally and in the majority of other jurisdictions. ACT Health does not publicly report death age range or sex information for any other notifiable conditions."
NSW Health stopped including ages and sexes of COVID-related deaths in May 2023 while Victoria's Department of Health still included age ranges in weekly reports.
Although the World Health Organization continues to classify COVID-19 as a global pandemic, Australia's chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly declared it was no longer of national significance in October last year. He said it was still "a serious threat" but Australia would manage COVID like other common communicable diseases by focusing on prevention, reducing spread, serious cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
The ACT Health spokesperson said the age and sex of all COVID-19-related deaths were reported, especially during the declared public health emergency, on social media. They said social media updates stopped from March 23 last year because the structure and content of weekly COVID reports were updated as part of "transitional reporting changes".
"These changes reflected the ACT government's transition to managing COVID like other notifiable conditions, and a focus on carefully monitoring the severity of illness and the impact on the health system, rather than overall case numbers," the spokesperson said.
About 200 infections and an estimated eight deaths were reported this month, as of July 12. Before the death of the man in his 40s, the last COVID-related death of a patient under 50 years old reported to ACT Health was in January 2023, the spokesperson said in a statement.
Professor Peter Collignon at the ANU Medical School said not reporting age-related information about COVID deaths "distorted" people's view of the disease.
He said the majority of deaths from COVID and the flu were people over 80 years old with underlying conditions but said it was useful to know when younger people died. He said it would improve public awareness of the risk to age groups.
The infectious diseases expert believed "balanced" public health reporting would share when young people were affected by these diseases, with context. He said governments should report death data annually at the least.
"When [someone young] dies you run the risk of overemphasising their youth, but by the same token, you've got to put a human face on this, and the rare exceptions ... make it real," Professor Collignon said. "I think it's a mistake not to report the ranges."
