The most disadvantaged areas of Melbourne have been hit hardest by Covid-19 deaths during Victoria’s Omicron wave, further underscoring the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on communities with lower employment and income levels, and poorer access to services.
Data obtained exclusively by Guardian Australia shows that in Melbourne’s most disadvantaged local government areas (LGAs), Covid deaths occurred at a rate of 26 deaths per 100,000 residents. This substantially outweighs deaths in areas of greater socio-economic advantage.
The local government areas of Brimbank, Greater Dandenong and Kingston accounted for 134 of the 943 Covid deaths in the state between 8 December 2021 and 21 February 2022.
Brimbank is Melbourne’s second-most disadvantaged LGA and third-most disadvantaged in the state, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ index of relative socio-economic disadvantage (IRSD), which takes into account factors such as employment, income levels, access to education, services and more.
It was also the hardest hit LGA overall in this period, with 65 deaths in total, that, when weighted for population, equates to 33.45 deaths for every 100,000 people.
In Greater Dandenong, which ranks the lowest in terms of socio-economic indicators, 37 people died, which equates to 24.33 deaths per 100,000 people.
George Disney, a social epidemiologist and research fellow from the University of Melbourne, told Guardian Australia the findings were “depressingly predictable”.
“If you’re disadvantaged, you’re more likely to be exposed to the disease and you’re more likely to have worse health outcomes,” Disney said.
Covid in Australia could be characterised as “a disease of disadvantage”, Disney said.
Migrant communities disproportionately hit
Data released by the ABS last week showed that Covid deaths since the onset of the pandemic until the end of January this year have disproportionately affected migrant communities, with 6.8 deaths per 100,000 people born overseas, compared with 2.3 for those born in Australia.
The 2016 census shows both Brimbank and Greater Dandenong have large numbers of migrants. Just 45% of the residents in Brimbank were born in Australia, and in Greater Dandenong the percentage is even lower, at 36%. Nationally, more than 66% of Australian residents were born here. A non-English language is spoken at home in more than 60% of households in both LGAs. The same is true for about 22% of households across Australia.
Just over a third of the people in Victoria who died from Covid in the past three months – 327 people – lived in the 10 most disadvantaged areas of Melbourne, accounting for 34.67% of the overall deaths during the most recent wave of the pandemic.
Five of those most disadvantaged LGAs – Brimbank, Casey, Whittlesea, Greater Dandenong and Hume – accounted for 240 deaths from Covid in this period.
Disney said the results were unsurprising. He said the issue of workplace entitlements such as sick leave had still not been adequately addressed.
“How are we two years into this and we don’t have universal sick pay? The isolation period will disappear – it’s happening overseas. The Covid-specific protections will go, and we’ll just be left with what we had previously. And there are so many people who don’t have protections from sickness,” he said.
“We shouldn’t have been surprised that this happened with Covid because it happens with almost every other disease. It’s depressingly predictable. The government could have averted so many deaths if they’d focused on this.”
Data echoes Delta wave
Many of these areas have repeatedly suffered during the pandemic. Hume and Whittlesea were also among the Victorian LGA’s with the five highest death rates during the Delta wave. Hume, Casey, Brimbank and Whittlesea all have had some of the highest case numbers throughout the pandemic.
In the middle of the Delta wave, Hume had already recorded more than 1,500 cases per 100,000 residents while more affluent areas of Melbourne had just 17.
The Victorian Department of Health shared data on Covid deaths in 63 local government areas. Of these, 25 had fewer than five deaths during the Omicron wave. Almost 900 deaths were recorded in 39 LGAs – most of them in metropolitan Melbourne. Most of the LGAs with few deaths were in rural areas.
Darebin in Melbourne’s north, where 51 people died from Covid, had the highest death rate during Omicron, at just over 34 deaths per 100,000 people. Darebin is ranked 13th lowest on the IRSD scale for Melbourne.
The Darebin, Brimbank, Moreland, Monash and Macedon Ranges LGAs all recorded more than 25 deaths per 100,000 people.
A report released last year by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that in the first year of the pandemic there were nearly four times as many deaths in population groups of lower socio-economic status compared to those in the highest.
Guardian Australia understands 37% of the people who died with Covid in Victoria during the Omicron wave had not received two doses of the vaccine, and about 33% were unvaccinated.
A spokesperson for the Victorian Department of Health expressed sympathy for those who had lost loved ones and said: “The data is clear that getting your third dose will significantly reduce your chances of going to hospital, going to ICU or dying from Covid-19. The best thing Victorians can do to protect themselves from Covid-19 is to get their third dose as soon as they’re eligible.”
The Guardian sought similar data from New South Wales but NSW Health did not provide it, nor could their representatives describe the methodology used for the publicly available breakdowns of areas in which deaths occurred.
