Death rates dropped in Tamworth region during pandemic's first year: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data

Just 519 people died in Tamworth in that year, with mortality in the local government area dropping by five per cent despite the COVID-19 crisis, according to the latest mortality data, released today.

Tamworth doctor Ian Kamerman said the lower overall mortality rate didn't come as an enormous surprise.

"One of the effects of the pandemic was it kept people at home, so it means that they were less likely to catch infectious diseases - which is why we had a lockdown - and also they're less likely to run into accidents," he said.

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The Northwest Health principal said the country had almost entirely avoided the effects of COVID-19 in 2020 - but only at a long-term cost to people's health.

"What we're probably done is what we've saved last year, we're probably going to see spread over the next few years," he said.

"With an increase in mortality from preventable diseases, particularly cancers, because a whole lot of the screening programs were either closed down, such as breast screen, or they were significantly reduced."

According to mortality statistics collected by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare deaths plummeted region-wide in 2020, with just 1,587 people dying of any cause that year in the New England North West region, down from 1,701 in 2019.

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But despite a relatively healthy year, the region continued to have higher-than-average death rates, particularly by suicide, car crashes, diabetes and smoking-related illness.

The region's overall death rate was among the highest in NSW, at 1.18 times the state average, second only to the Far West and Orana region.

Nearly a third more people died by suicide in Tamworth than the state average in 2020.

Some 51 people died by suicide in the local government area between 2016 and 2020, the 19^th highest rate in NSW, adjusted for age.

The rate was 1.29 times the state average.

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In the mining community of Muswellbrook, which has the highest suicide rate in NSW, more than twice as many people died by suicide than the state average.

The leading causes of death in the region over the four years to 2020 included heart disease, dementia, stroke, lung cancer and the lung disease chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Director of the University of Newcastle Department of Rural Health and veteran GP, Jenny May, said the causes of death were completely on trend, but would likely soon shift.

Chronic disease, traditionally the biggest mortality burden in the region, "may well be challenged" by infectious diseases in the next few years, she said.

"What you'll probably see in the next two years is an increase in deaths from communicable diseases and clearly that will be the effect of COVID and possibly flu," she said.

"With the advent of COVID, I suspect we will see the rates of death from COVID and other communicable diseases trend upward and potentially overrun some of our chronic disease mortality."

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She said a single set of statistics is rarely the full story, and most of the people who died in 2020 probably did so after a decade or two of health problems.

Suicide rates are caused by multiple factors, including demography and geography, she said.

"Rural areas do have higher rates of suicide than urban areas. We know that, that is multifactorial - related to the potential isolation that people feel, living in rural areas. But also it relates to access to means."

Some 209 people died in Armidale, 106 in Glen Innes, 55 in Uralla, 63 in Tenterfield, 32 in Walcha, 163 in Inverell, 99 in the Moree Plains, and 111 people in Gunnedah, in 2020.

With 33 deaths between 2016 and 2020, Tamworth also had among the state's highest rates of deaths by car crash, with 2.57 times as many people dying that way as the state average. Some 117 people died in a car accident in the New England North West region between 2016 and 2020, 2.51 times the state average.

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