"In the blink of an eye, COVID has become one of the nation’s biggest killers, and because it is “additional”, life expectancy will start to decline, something that has not occurred for more than five decades."

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"Almost every Australian has been infected, many two or three times, and more than 17,000 lives have been lost to the pandemic. That number grows when so-called “excess deaths” - deaths more than expected based on the average in pre-pandemic years - are calculated."

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"While case numbers mean much less now that testing and reporting have dropped off so significantly, hospitalisation rates remain a reasonably reliable guide to the scale of the problem."

"Almost 4000 people are hospitalised with COVID-19, close to the peak of 5500 in the July-August wave. Emergency departments across the country are under strain."

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"Approximately 15,000 lives lost in 2022 (compared with just over 2000 in the previous two years)"

"But a conservative estimate is that 500,000 Australians will suffer from long COVID"

"The current wave is almost as severe as any of the other three waves we faced last year, with more than 100,000 reported cases a week."

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