AAP FACTCHECK – The coastal town of Port Hedland in Western Australia has seen a 700 per cent increase in deaths following the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, according to claims online.
This is false. Deaths decreased in 2021 – the year COVID-19 vaccines were introduced – compared to the previous year, before rising slightly again in 2022.
The vaccines have been linked to just 14 deaths across the entire country.
The claim is being shared on social media following an October 11 meeting of the Port Hedland council, at which councillors voted 5-2 to pass a motion calling on state and federal governments to suspend COVID-19 vaccinations.
Social media posts supporting the council’s decision are claiming the area has seen a dramatic increase in deaths since the vaccines were introduced.
“Last week in West Australia (Port Hedland) a local council became the first ever to vote for WITHDRAWAL OF MRNA COVID VACCINES in Australia,” one Facebook post states.
“This snip of the meeting shares a local anecdote of an unprecedent [sic] 700% INCREASE IN DEATHS in the local area, since the roll out of the Covid vaccines.”
The post includes a clip of the meeting’s live stream in which councillor Adrian McRae, who introduced the motion, recounts a claimed conversation with an unnamed funeral director (one hour 36 minutes 48 seconds).
“My own company, GBTK, here in Hedland, has just finished the construction of a cold body storage facility here in Wedgefield … I spoke with the company owners, who we built it for, another local Pilbara funeral director.
“They told me that in 2020 at the height of COVID that they were doing on average one funeral a week. One. Since the injection rollout they are doing over one funeral a day. It’s almost a seven-fold increase,” he says.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows the claim of a 700 per cent increase in deaths is wrong.
The latest data on deaths in Australia was released on October 10, 2024, and includes figures for each local government area.
Port Hedland recorded 62 deaths in 2019, 46 in 2020, 43 in 2021, 69 in 2022 and 58 in 2023 (table 5).
In the years leading up to the pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout, the general pattern was similar with fluctuations from year to year but a general steady upward trend.
This trend is mirrored by an increase in the area’s population. According to the same ABS dataset, the population went from 12,945 in 2000 to 14,624 in 2010 and then 16,115 in 2020.
In 2021 it was 16,666 and then 17,247 in 2023.
When the total population is taken into account, the rate of deaths per 1000 people is slowly falling. This includes a slight drop in 2021 from the previous year and then a rise in 2022 – both in keeping with historic year-on-year variations.
Queensland University of Technology statistician Adrian Barnett said no matter which way you look at the figures, there has not been a 700 per cent increase in deaths.
Regardless, he urged caution of making too much of year-on-year percentage increases and decreases with such small numbers.
Prof Barnett said it would only take one more or less death each year to shift the percentage figure for the Port Hedland area.
Australian National University demographer Sergey Timonin agreed that analysing trends is difficult when the number of deaths is so small.
The best way to illustrate changes in mortality is through the standardised death rate, which takes into account the size and age structure of the population, Dr Timonin told AAP FactCheck.
However, the ABS dataset for Port Hedland doesn’t include this figure for most years because the figures were so small.
While Australia recorded more deaths than expected in 2022, the cause has been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and other infectious diseases plus delayed healthcare – not vaccination.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has identified 14 cases in which the cause of death was linked to vaccination from the 1004 reports received and reviewed, with no new vaccine-related deaths identified since 2022.
The Verdict
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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