ALTHOUGH Hunter COVID rates are falling, new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that Australians died last year at a rate 16 per cent above the historical average.
Health and medical groups including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners agree the increased mortality rate is driven by COVID, but say questions remain.
The Actuaries Institute - the peak body for actuaries - has published regular summaries of excess deaths during the pandemic, and says its analysis of the ABS figures cuts the mortality increase to 13 per cent.
"Just over half of the excess mortality for the first eight months of 2022 is due to deaths from COVID-19 (+8200 deaths) with another +2100 deaths due to deaths with COVID," the institute said last month. "The remaining excess of +5100 had no mention of COVID-19 on the death certificate."
The institute said that most of the excess mortality was concentrated among people aged 65 or over, but there was a "significant percentage" of excess mortality in all age groups last year.
The latest NSW government summary, for the week to Saturday, January 21, records 282 COVID hospitalisations, 32 people in intensive care and 124 deaths - 64 of which were aged care residents.
Of these, Hunter New England Local Health District (HNELHD) accounted for 44 hospitalisations, four ICU admissions and 14 deaths.
The previous state weekly totals, to January 14, showed 453 hospital admissions (43 in the Hunter New England), 47 ICU admissions (7 in the HNE) and 123 deaths (14 in the HNELD).
Critics of Australia's vaccination program have accused health officials of exaggerating the severity of the virus by including deaths of people "with" the virus instead of counting only those who died "from" COVID.
"It is unclear how many people who died with COVID-19 would have died during this period anyway, and how many may have had their death hastened by COVID-19," the Actuaries Institute says.
"However, given that with COVID-19 deaths follow the same peaks and troughs as from COVID-19 deaths, it seems that COVID-19 is a catalyst for with COVID-19 deaths, rather than being merely coincidental."
ABS mortality statistics published on Tuesday said that of 488,810 death registrations during the pandemic period, 3.0 per cent were of people who died from or with COVID.
Of 14,407 COVID deaths registered with the ABS, 11,696 (81.2 per cent) had COVID as the underlying cause.
It was a contributing factor for the rest.
The latest official Australian COVID figures show 18,092 deaths from 11.2 million notified positives.
According to the Johns Hopkins University COVID data base, Australia is in tenth position, globally, when measured by case numbers over the past 28 days, with 188,722 cases and 1128 deaths.
Experts say the winding back of mandatory case reporting means these figures are no longer as reliable as they were, and will substantially under report cases in a lot of countries.
Japan tops the Johns Hopkins list with 3.48 million cases and 10,069 deaths in 28 days, followed by the US, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Germany, China, India, Italy and France, before Australia.
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