COVID-19 Register

This report examines hospitalisations and deaths for people with COVID-19 during the first 3 years of the pandemic in Australia, with a focus on the height of the pandemic when the Omicron subvariant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus dominated. The role of COVID-19 vaccination and antiviral use among people with COVID-19 was also examined.

This report is based on the final version of the COVID-19 Register, the largest source of linked COVID-19 case information in Australia.

The COVID-19 Register is a linked data asset that enables evidence-based research, and public health and health system planning for current and future pandemics. This linkage project also facilitates selected information to be fed back and incorporated into the local notifiable disease systems of states and territories to improve data completeness and utility.

The first version of the COVID-19 Register was made available to approved researchers in December 2022. The linked data has since been updated with expanded coverage over time, through Version 2, Version 2.5 and now Version 2.6.

The purpose of this report is to briefly describe the linkage method and process, and compare high level linkage results for previous and current versions of the COVID-19 Register. This report will be a resource for future researchers wanting to use the data.

This report demonstrates the utility of the newly established cross-jurisdictional COVID-19 Register. It explores potential analyses which could be conducted on the data using a subset of linked cases. This includes exploring demographic patterns, health outcomes following COVID‑19 and health system use before and after a COVID‑19 diagnosis. It is a collaboration between the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance.