New Zealand is experiencing higher mortality this year. Even with the late arrival of the COVID fatalities in NZ, COVID-19 fatalities don’t make up the difference between the expected mortality versus the actual deaths.

Below is the mortality rate from all causes which has averaged 22% above average for the same time of year from the 2015-2019 average.

The below graph is the 7 day running average of COVID deaths for the same time period

There were 1,862 fatalities recorded with COVID-19 as the reason for death in this period, which is an average of 88 per week

All cause mortality has been averaging 138 per week more than the 2015-2019 average and 109 above the 2019 value.

This gives us between 21 to 50 additional deaths per week above COVID-19 fatalities.

Below is the time frame where boosters were given compared with the mortality rate over the same time. Interestingly when we were recording virtually zero COVID-19 fatalities prior to the February start, our mortality rate had already begun to increase markedly reaching 20% increases at times. This only went up further when the COVID-19 deaths started being reported.

And the same time for COVID-19 deaths

The increase in deaths from 2015 to 2019 was a total of 2,652 for this five year period or a total of 8% growth in 5 years. 2022 is set to be 14% higher than 2019. Given our mortality rate increase was negative in 2020 and a much lower increase in 2021 that is a huge growth in mortality for this current year.

Is anyone looking in to this increase in deaths?