AIHW Bulletin | April 2025
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW)
Australia's national agency for health and welfare statistics and information. Have a question? 📩 info@aihw.gov.au
Welcome to the AIHW Bulletin, your go-to source for the latest data news on a range of health and welfare topics in Australia.
In this edition, we explore shots, stats, and staying well: how vaccines are shaping Australia's health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers immunisation the most effective medical intervention for preventing deaths and reducing disease in our communities.
In 1974, the Expanded Programme on Immunization (now known as the Essential Programme on Immunization) was launched, building on the momentum of the smallpox eradication effort to ensure that all children, in every country, could benefit from life-saving vaccines.
Today, every country in the world has a national immunisation program. Thanks to high vaccination coverage, immunisation has significantly reduced the incidence of diseases like measles, rubella, and diphtheria.
Observed in the last week of April, World Immunisation Week serves as a timely reminder of how far we've come, and how important it is to maintain momentum.
Sustaining high immunisation rates is essential not only to protect individuals, but also to prevent the spread of disease throughout the broader community. The AIHW tracks immunisation efforts and their impact on the health system, providing a clear picture of coverage levels, disease burden, and progress over time.
The impact of vaccination in Australia
Life expectancy in Australia has increased substantially since the start of the 20th century. Over the last 100 years, deaths from infectious diseases have declined.
The Burden of Vaccine Preventable Diseases in Australia (2019) study estimated the immediate and future burden (including premature death) of newly diagnosed cases of diseases for which vaccines are provided under the National Immunisation Program. It found that the rate of burden had decreased by nearly one-third between 2005 and 2015. The decrease was driven by falls for diseases for which vaccines had been introduced in the previous 20 years, such as human papillomavirus, pneumococcal disease and rotavirus.
The AIHW will be publishing updated fact sheets on vaccine-preventable diseases later this year.
Immunisation is a safe and effective way to protect against harmful infectious diseases and prevent the spread of these diseases among the community. Several vaccine preventable diseases are now rare in Australia due to high immunisation rates.
Some vaccines may also have effects beyond the immediate and future burden of diseases for which vaccines are provided, including protective and therapeutic effects against post-acute infection conditions.
The flu factor
The Essential Vaccines: performance report provides an assessment of state and territory performance against the performance benchmarks outlined in the Essential Vaccines Schedule of the Federation Funding Agreement – Health (EVS).
The AIHW provides an independent assessment as to whether the benchmarks have been met. A performance milestone of ‘provision of seasonal influenza vaccination rollout plan’ is also specified in the Agreement. For the seventh year of the agreement, all states and territories achieved this milestone.
The Essential Vaccines: performance report 2023-24, will be released in May.
The benchmarks specified in the EVS were first established in 2017 and re-established in 2021 and 2023, which means they do not include vaccines for COVID-19.
Linking data to uncover new insights
Data linkage is the process of combining multiple data sources that correspond to the same person or entity, to create a new and more comprehensive data set. Linking data on notifiable infectious diseases with the health system and mortality data is crucial to understanding the impacts of infectious disease outbreaks, like COVID-19.
The COVID-19 Register is the largest source of linked COVID-19 case information in Australia that combines a range of different data sets. It enables the health service use and health outcomes of people affected by COVID-19 to be monitored and tracked over time.
COVID-19 hospitalisations
The AIHW – in collaboration with the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance – has linked data to produce a new report Hospitalisations and deaths following COVID-19, 2020–2022: a linked data analysis.
The report explores hospitalisation and mortality outcomes for people with COVID-19 during the first 3 years of the pandemic, with a focus on the Omicron subvariant. An overview of COVID-19 vaccination and antiviral use among people diagnosed with COVID-19 was also examined.
The report shows that more than 1 in 3 Australians (8.5 million) had a COVID-19 diagnosis that was notified to health officials between 2020 and 2022.
COVID-19 hospitalisation rates were twice as high in unvaccinated people aged 70–79 than those with 3 or more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Overall, 4% of people received booster doses (3 or more) experienced hospitalisation, compared to 9.5% among people vaccinated with 2 doses and roughly 17% among people who received 0 or 1 dose. Of those hospitalised with COVID-19, 1 in 40 had an intensive care unit stay.
COVID-19 antiviral treatments were made available from March 2022 through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to people aged over 70 and other high-risk groups. COVID-19 death rates were lower among people prescribed COVID-19 antivirals compared to those who were not.
Although there were more cases of COVID-19 during the Omicron period, people were less likely to die from COVID-19. The case fatality rate was 10 times lower (0.11%) compared with the pre-Omicron period (1.1%).
Potentially preventable hospitalisations
Potentially preventable hospitalisations is a key measure of the performance of the health system and serves as a proxy measure of access to timely, effective and appropriate primary and community-based health care.
Age-standardised rates of vaccine-preventable hospitalisations increased between 2020–21 and 2021–22. This was driven by an increase in pneumonia and influenza hospitalisations of 15 per 100,000 people (adjusting for age) in 2020–21 compared with 74 per 100,000 people in 2021–22.
Notably, the 2020–21 period coincided with continuing public health measures from the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have contributed to a reduction in the prevalence of pneumonia and influenza in the community, and a subsequent reduction in vaccine-preventable hospitalisations during this period.
In May, the AIHW will be releasing an updated report on potentially preventable hospitalisations for the period 2017–18 to 2022–23.
For more information about admitted patient hospitalisations, including the impact of COVID-19 on admitted patient activity, see MyHospitals: Admitted patients.