With the federal government on the brink of collapse, a government-commissioned study has released a report finding the “death toll” from the coronavirus outbreak has increased to 1.2 million.
The report found 1,769 deaths had occurred in Australia from October to December, an increase of 1,976 from the same period in the same year last year.
The study, commissioned by the Victorian and Queensland governments, says the number of deaths is “unprecedented” and has prompted an outcry among politicians and scientists.
“What this means is that it’s actually the highest death toll in the world, period,” Liberal Senator David Leyonhjelm said.
“This is a very big number.
It’s more than double what we’ve had in the last six months.”
If you compare that with other countries, in the OECD, they had 1.4 million deaths, in Australia they had only one million.
“Mr Leyonhs report said coronaviruses cause more than half of the deaths in Australia.”
The vast majority of deaths are due to other causes,” he said.”[They] can be fatal and include deaths from cardiac arrest, stroke, liver failure, and a range of other conditions.””
So there’s actually a lot of people who’ve died from this that we haven’t been able to track down yet,” he added.”
We have more than one million Australians who’ve been affected, and it’s really been a wake-up call for us.
“He said the “surprising” number of coronavirotic deaths in the study showed that “the true toll of the pandemic is much higher”.”
I think it’s fair to say that in the course of this pandemic, the true toll has increased substantially,” he told 7.30.
The Government’s official coronaviral death toll has been released, but it shows the number is “almost certainly more than 1.1 million”.
The study found 1.5 million deaths had been reported in the period between October and December last year, an extra 617 deaths compared to the same month in 2015.
The rise in deaths “is more than any other global event, except for the 2011-12 Ebola epidemic which resulted in a record-breaking 1.9 million deaths”, according to the study.”
It is likely that the number could rise further in the months ahead,” the report said.
A spokesperson for the Victorian Government said the Government had “no comment” to make.
Topics:coronavirus,health,health-policy,government-and-politics,death,diseases-and/or-disorders,community-and
