COVID rarely rates a mention in the news these days, yet it hasn’t gone away.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, is still with us. It continues to infect thousands of Australians each month, still puts vulnerable people into hospital, sadly still causes deaths and leaves a steady stream of people living with disability from long COVID.
As the virus continues to evolve, booster vaccines have been updated to better match the version of the virus currently circulating.
Here’s what we know about how much COVID is around, prominent viral subvariants and the latest booster shots. The graph above shows Australia’s COVID notifications for the past 24 months taken from the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System.
Although the December 2025 data are incomplete, we can see that in November 2025 there were still nearly 8,000 notifications nationally.
Two clear peaks appear: a summer wave in January and a winter wave in June. While 2025 levels are lower than those seen in 2024, the virus continues a pattern of rolling, seasonal mini-waves – just quieter ones than in previous years.
Of course, these numbers underestimate the number of true infections because most people no longer test for COVID or report positive results.