Deaths due to acute respiratory infections in Australia

This publication reports on the number of monthly deaths due to COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). These viral diseases will be referred to collectively as deaths due to acute respiratory infections. Due to the higher number of deaths due to COVID-19, a more detailed analysis will be included for this cause. 

The ABS mortality data is sourced from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and is separate from the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System. While the registration-based deaths data takes longer to receive and process, this dataset has provided important supplementary information to the surveillance system data. 

All data presented in this article is provisional. It is expected that numbers of deaths due to these causes will increase for more recent time periods as more death registrations are received by the ABS. 

The table below shows the number of deaths associated with acute respiratory infections reported on a medical certificate of cause of death by month and year. A death due to an acute respiratory infection is one where the viral disease has either directly caused the death (the virus has caused terminal complications such as pneumonia) or the person has died with the virus (a person has died from another cause but the viral illness still contributed significantly to death). 

• COVID-19 has been the leading cause of acute respiratory infection related mortality across 2023-2025. In 2025 the number of deaths involving influenza has been close to the number of deaths involving COVID-19 in April and July. Since August 2021 the number of deaths involving COVID-19 has been higher than the number of deaths involving influenza.
• Since the end of 2021 COVID-19 has recorded a pattern where there are two peaks of mortality during the year - one occurring between November and January and the other occurring between May and August. While there was still an increase in deaths occurring between November 2024 and January 2025 when compared with October 2024, the number of deaths occurring during this period was much lower than other years. There were more deaths in June and July 2025 than earlier in the year, but the winter peak has been much smaller than in 2023 or 2024.
• The number of COVID-19-related deaths increased in June and remained at a similar level in July after being at relatively low levels since February. Deaths remain at a level well below 2024 and 2023. In the year to July 2025 there were 1,603 deaths involving COVID-19, compared to 3,743 in 2024 and 4,398 in 2023.
• Deaths involving influenza increased further in July 2025 and remain at a higher level than either 2024 or 2023. In the year to July 2025 there were 777 deaths involving influenza, compared to 609 in 2024 and 371 in 2023.
• Deaths involving RSV increased in July 2025 and are at their highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.  In the year to July 2025 there were 307 deaths involving RSV, compared to 326 in 2024 and 210 in 2023.

The ABS codes an underlying cause of death (UCOD) for all deaths in the national mortality dataset. The underlying cause of death is defined as the disease, condition or external event that started the chain of events leading to death. International coding rules are applied to disease and conditions appearing on the medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) to assign the UCOD. A disease or condition must be certified on the MCCD to be coded by the ABS. If COVID-19, influenza or RSV is listed as the underlying cause of death, the death is considered to have been caused by the virus. 

The following table shows the number of deaths due to acute respiratory diseases since 2023. 

• The number of deaths due to COVID-19 fell slightly in July 2025, and deaths remain at lower levels than the same period in earlier years.
• Deaths due to influenza increased in July 2025 and were close to the number of deaths due to COVID-19. The 258 deaths due to influenza in July 2025 were the most in a single month since September 2017 (503 deaths). There were 658 deaths due to influenza in the first seven months for 2025, slightly more than the 631 deaths recorded in the first seven months of 2019, which was a recent bad year for influenza.
• Deaths due to RSV have increased in June and July 2025.

The table below shows the number of acute-respiratory associated deaths where the person has died "with" the virus (a person has died from another cause but the viral illness still contributed significantly to death).

• COVID-19 and Influenza are more likely to be assigned as the underlying causes of death rather than a contributing factor (i.e. a person died with the virus). The opposite is true for RSV - it is more likely to be listed as a significant contributor to death. To wholly monitor the effects of RSV on mortality, deaths with RSV should be taken into consideration.
• Deaths with COVID-19 increased in July 2025 but remain at lower levels than previous years.
• Deaths with influenza mentioned as a contributory cause increased in July 2025 but remains below the number recorded in July 2024.
• The number of deaths where RSV was certified as a contributory cause increased in July 2025 and was above the level in July 2023 and 2024. For the year to July, the number of deaths with RSV has been lower in 2025 than in 2024 but higher than in 2023.

• More males have died from COVID-19 compared to females across 2023-2025. The opposite has been true for influenza and RSV, with more females dying than males from these viruses.
• Those aged over 90 years are the only age group to consistently record more deaths of females than males from COVID-19. Nearly two thirds of Australia's population of persons aged over 90 years are female.
• All three of these acute respiratory infections are more likely to cause death in older age groups than younger age groups.
• Deaths from RSV have not been included in this table for 2025 due to small numbers. Of the 117 deaths due to RSV in 2025, 69 occurred in females and 48 in males. 96 of those deaths have occurred for people aged 80 years or older and no deaths for people aged younger than 60 years old.

• As the most populous state, New South Wales generally records the highest numbers of deaths for acute respiratory infections.
• COVID-19 has caused more deaths than influenza and RSV across 2023-2025 in all jurisdictions with the exception of the Northern Territory recording more influenza deaths in 2025.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are at heightened risk of more severe outcomes from acute respiratory diseases. There are several reasons for this, including higher rates of socioeconomic disadvantage, higher rates of chronic diseases and limited access to culturally safe health care.

This section presents three tables which includes information on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died from acute respiratory diseases. The first two tables focus on COVID-19 mortality only due to the higher numbers of deaths from the virus. The third table presents numbers of deaths and age-standardised death rates on deaths associated with COVID-19, influenza and RSV. For most of the analysis deaths include those where the acute respiratory disease was listed on the medical certificate of cause of death. This includes deaths where the acute respiratory disease caused death and those where the acute respiratory disease contributed to death. Data is presented in this way largely due to the small numbers of deaths from these diseases in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  

There have been deaths recorded in all jurisdictions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. However, the rest of this analysis focusses on deaths registered in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory only. Currently, these five states and territories have evidence of a sufficient level of Indigenous identification and high enough numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths to support mortality analysis.

There were 82 deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people involving COVID-19 in 2024. This is lower than in both 2023 (120 deaths) and 2022 (265 deaths). The 19 deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people involving COVID-19 in 2025 is substantially lower than in previous years. 

There were 486 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had COVID-19 certified as a cause of death across the five jurisdictions in 2022-2025. Of these people:

• 312 died due to COVID-19. This is where the virus caused complications that led directly to death. A further 174 people died with COVID-19. This is where another disease caused the terminal complication causing death but COVID-19 was a contributing factor.
• The age-standardised death rate for deaths from COVID-19 is higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females than males, while the reverse is true for deaths with COVID-19. For non-Indigenous people, males have a higher death rate from COVID-19 and with COVID-19 than females.
• Of those who died from or with COVID-19, a higher proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people died with COVID-19 as a contributing factor compared with non-Indigenous people (35.8% compared with 25.6%).
• The mortality rate from COVID-19 is 1.5 times higher in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people compared to non-Indigenous people.
• For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females, the rate of mortality with COVID-19 is 2.3 times higher than that of non-Indigenous females.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who died by an acute respiratory disease: 

• COVID-19 caused more deaths than both influenza and RSV across each year in 2022-2024. To date in 2025, there have been 19 deaths involving COVID-19 and 29 deaths involving influenza.
• The mortality rate for COVID-19 and influenza related mortality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was higher than non-Indigenous people across each year in 2022-2024. In 2025 the influenza related mortality rate was higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than non-Indigenous people, and there have been too few COVID-19 related deaths to produce a reliable rate.
• The annualised 2025 mortality rate for influenza related mortality is higher in both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous people than for 2024, but data for 2025 is not yet complete. Influenza mortality rates were higher in 2024 than in 2022 or 2023.

Deaths from acute respiratory infections as a proportion of total deaths changes over time and is dependent on a number of factors. The following table shows the number of deaths due to acute respiratory infections by month of occurrence in the context of total deaths registered by 31 August and received by the ABS. These counts are not final and are considered preliminary. For example, the number of deaths that occurred in the month of August that the ABS has received registrations for is less than half of the deaths that occurred in the preceding months. This is because many deaths will not have had their registrations finalised yet and are not included in counts. This number will increase as the ABS receives more finalised registrations and an updated count for all months will be published in next month's publication. Cause of death counts will also increase as more deaths are received. See the 'Timeliness and Completeness' section in the Provisional Mortality Statistics publication for more information on when deaths are most likely to be received by the ABS.  

Deaths from COVID-19 accounted for 1.7% of all registered deaths in January 2025 and declined to lows of 0.7% between March and May. Deaths from COVID-19 currently account for 1.7% of all deaths received by the ABS that have occurred in June and 1.6% of deaths in July. 

Deaths due to influenza were 0.6% of all deaths in April, 0.9% of deaths in June and 1.5% of deaths in July 2025.

Numbers and proportions may change as additional registrations are received by the ABS and cause of death revisions applied.