Australia has recently reported an alarming and “incredibly high” 13 percent excess death rate for 2022. The Australian government is now considering launching an urgent investigation into this rapid surge in the deaths among vaccinated people.
According to an analysis of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data by the Actuaries Institute, an additional 15,400 people died in the first eight months of the year in the Land Down Under. Actuaries said that number includes around one-third of those having no link to the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).
Karen Cutter, the spokeswoman for the institute’s COVID-19 Mortality Working Group, said the figures were an incredibly high number for mortality and it was not clear what was driving the spike.
“Mortality does not normally vary by more than one to two percent, so 13 percent is way higher than normal levels,” she said. “I am not aware [of anything comparable] in the recent past, but I haven’t gone back and looked [historically]. They talk about the flu season of 2017 being really bad, and the mortality there was one percent higher than normal. So it’s well outside the range of normal.”
Financial media outlet Benzinga reported that this came after the Asia-Pacific nation’s latest mortality data released in November showed that there had been 128,797 deaths from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, which was 17 percent higher than the historical average.
Australia is one of the most COVID-19 jabbed countries having more than 64 million total vaccine doses administered nationally since the start of the rollout in February 2021. Fully vaccinated double-boosted people aged 16 and above are reported at 5,303,168.
Australian government recommends against the fifth vaccine dose
As much of the population in the country has been quadruple-shot, the Australian health authorities are no longer recommending getting the fifth shot. But they are still encouraging the eligible to sign up for their remaining booster doses in preparation for the building fresh wave of coronavirus.
In a press conference for the announcement of new vaccination recommendations back in November, Health Minister Mark Butler said the average daily cases had been 47 percent higher in the previous week than the week before that. Meanwhile, cases remain 85 percent below the previous peak of late July.
The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunizations (ATAGI) recommended against a fifth dose, or the third booster. This is following a shred of evidence from Singapore’s recent wave that has found that severe illness and death were rare among the vaccinated and that a fifth shot had minimal impact on virus transmission.
“ATAGI has considered international evidence as well as the local data around vaccination numbers, as well as case numbers in the pandemic and decided not to recommend the fifth dose,” Butler stated.
However, he still urged those yet to get the recommended number of shots to do so. There are around 5.5 million people in Australia, or about 20 percent of the population, who are yet to receive a third dose despite being eligible.
Meanwhile, Labor MP and infectious disease specialist Dr. Michelle Ananda-Rajah has denounced the ATAGI for keeping “overly restrictive” rules on access to coronavirus vaccines, urging the government to expand eligibility for children and younger people.
Ananda-Rajah called on the “health experts” to provide more transparency on its decision to not recommend fourth shots for people under 30 and to not allow under-fives to receive the jabs as many parents were “desperate” to have their children vaccinated. (Related: Australia launches $1 billion program to “vaccinate” BABIES and young children for covid.)
ATAGI has recommended that Big Pharma Pfizer’s omicron-specific vaccine be approved as a booster dose for adults. Butler approved this and announced that 4.7 million doses will arrive ahead of a rollout due to begin in mid-December.
The current recommendations mean people 30 and over are eligible for a second booster, or fourth shot; those 16 and over can get a booster, or third shot; children aged five to 15 are eligible for two shots, and can only get a booster if they have serious health issues; and infants under five are only eligible for vaccination if they have serious health problems.