Covid19 Winter Deaths: New Zealand Versus Australia

Wednesday, 3 August 2022, 10:55 am
Press Release: Keith Rankin

New Zealand has had the worst reported mortality rate for Covid19 in the world for the last two weeks, according to the international data. And by a significant margin. But you wouldn't know it from the traditional media. 'Underwhelming' is an overstatement.

From worldometer weekly trends, that's 54 deaths per million people in the week to 1 August 2022. The top five countries are:

• New Zealand, 54 deaths per million
• Barbados, 33 deaths per million
• Isle of Man, 35 deaths per million
• (New Zealand revised, 33 deaths per million)
• Bermuda, 32 deaths per million
• Australia, 27 deaths per million

These are the data published on Monday 2 August, New Zealand time. This screenshot is taken from the same table on Friday 22 July.

We should note that all these countries other than New Zealand and Australia have populations less than 300,000 people. (Barbados's population is 5.75% of New Zealand's.) For very small countries, just one death has a big impact on the death rate. Unlike these little countries, New Zealand has been in the 'top ten' in the world for published covid deaths for much of the year to date.

For a few days, the people at Worldometer struggled to work out New Zealand's new reporting system. But they eventually decided that the original measure – deaths within 28 days of a positive test for Covid19 – was both the most comparable with other countries, and the most indicative as a measure of when the deaths occurred.

(The statistic above for 'New Zealand revised' is the new number favoured by the Ministry of Health. It's not shown on Worldometer, and shown here only for comparison. This number – people who would not have died had they not had Covid19 – includes a few people who tested positive more than 28 days before their deaths.)

For the last few months, New Zealand has consistently had double Australia's weekly Covid19 death rate. Both countries saw substantial increases in Covid19 deaths last month.

A quick snapshot of other information, not easily accessible, about those who died in New Zealand with Covid19 in the last week:

• 86% of the deaths with covid in the last week were neither Māori, nor Pacific, nor Asian. Thus, mostly Pakeha.
• 83% of the deaths were people aged over 70 (ie all eligible – in principle though maybe not in practice – for four vaccination shots).
• 79% had had vaccination 'boosters' (though, for a significant majority of these, their immunity will have waned to minimal levels)

It seems likely that the second booster delay – much of it petty bureaucracy (see my Answers Please? on Scoop last week) – is an important reason why New Zealand's Covid19 death rate is higher than Australia's. Fortunately for me, I got my second vaccine booster yesterday.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

© Scoop Media

Keith Rankin

Political Economist, Scoop Columnist

Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s.

Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like.

Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.

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