Statistics New Zealand today released its year-on-year update on births and deaths between September 2021 and September 2022. It showed a “sharp” 10 per cent increase in the mortality rate, with 38,052 registered deaths up from 34,578 in the previous 12 months. Of these, 5 per cent - or 2025 deaths - were attributed to Covid, according to the Ministry of Health data. While this year’s Covid death rate was around ten times greater than the road toll, he said had the infection not arrived to a highly-vaccinated population the mortality rate would have been easily ten-fold higher. Cases in recent days have topped 4000 and deputy director general of health Dr Andrew Old warned of an uncertain outlook for summer as a cocktail of new variants circulated across the country.

Source: New Zealand Herald November 17, 2022 18:52 UTC