There has been a significant increase in the number of non-COVID deaths since the Omicron wave took off, and that has doctors worried.
There were an additional 4,000 non-COVID deaths, or a five per cent increase, in the first four months this year, compared with the pre-pandemic average.
The director of the Mortality Data Centre at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Lauren Moran, said among the additional 4,000 deaths, more people died of chronic diseases compared to similar periods prior to the pandemic.
"We can see that for dementia, there's been around a 20 per cent increase this year of the total number of deaths when we compare it to prior years, and around 18 per cent higher than expected for diabetes," she said.
Ms Moran said that while some of the increase could be put down to natural variation and increases with an ageing population, the deaths are statistically significant and confirm a trend that began late last year.
"It is unusual for us to see such a high increase of deaths during the summer period," she said.
"Normally we would see those big increases during winter."
'There were too few staff to feed him'
The Australian Bureau of Statistics can't say what lies behind the higher death rates.
"From the ABS's perspective, we don't actually say what is causing the trend in deaths, but there certainly are some links through to the Omicron wave and we need to monitor that trend really very closely," Ms Moran said.
But geriatrician Dr Kate Gregorevic, who assessed nursing home patients sent to hospital during lockdowns, has some ideas about what's causing the increase.
"Looking at this trend, I am really concerned that there may have been factors during the pandemic that have potentially contributed to this," she said.
While Dr Gregorevic praised nursing home staff, she said there weren't enough of them to feed and care properly for residents during lockdowns.
"I do a lot of work in hospitals and I would see a lot of people who would come in and they've had a fall, but in the background of that fall they lost a really significant amount of weight," she said.
She fears moving appointments online disadvantaged some patients and lifestyle changes also didn't help.
Anne Fairhall has seen firsthand how the COVID pandemic impacted how nursing homes were able to care for patients.
She has visited her husband Geoff almost every day for the 12 years he's been in a nursing home, except during lockdowns late last year when things went very badly.
"He lost 25kg just over a two-month period," she said.
"What was happening was there were too few staff to feed him. I was very distressed when I found he lost so much weight it upset me a lot."
But Ms Fairhall said he fared better than some.
"I know many friends who have lost their partners," she said.
"They sometimes die of comorbidities with dementia, but all of it happens much faster when you're not being properly cared for."
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians president, Dr Jacqueline Small, fears little has improved since those statistics were collected earlier this year.
"We're still seeing now that the health services are very stretched and that can result in displacement of providing services for other health conditions in order to support the crisis that is the pandemic before us at the moment."
