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Hundreds of Canadians are still dying of COVID-19 every week. Who are they?

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Even in her 80s, Josephine Moschitto still cheered on her beloved Toronto Blue Jays, went grocery shopping near her retirement home, and had recently discovered the joys of playing Wordle on her iPad.

The Mississauga, Ont., resident lost her husband of six decades in early 2021, and had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. But she was healthy, mobile and still enjoyed time with family, including a lunch with her loved ones in September.

“And she looked perfectly fine,” her son Victor recalled. “We were all talking, laughing … then a week later, circumstances changed.”

That’s when Josephine started showing symptoms of COVID-19. And, despite her having received four vaccine doses, the virus took a serious toll.

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The 89-year-old went to a local hospital in late September, and spent a few days in a bed in the emergency department, waiting for a room. At first her illness seemed mild — with none of the telltale breathing problems that used to strike so many COVID patients — but she slowly began to decline.

COVID-19 deaths on the rise again in Canada

Data shows the number of Canadians dying from COVID-19 each week is rising once again, a stark reminder that for those most at risk the pandemic continues to be a real and legitimate threat.

Victor and his sister Laura visited their mother as much as possible, often playing her favourite oldies, until the hospital stopped allowing visitors during a COVID-19 outbreak.

“Then she just took a turn for the worse,” Laura said.

In her last few days at the hospital, Josephine was put on oxygen and developed pneumonia. She didn’t want to be intubated, so she was never transferred into intensive care.

She died on Oct. 9.

“I always thought to myself that my mom had a few good years left in her,” Victor said.

“You all of a sudden realize that the disease that has captured so many lives is actually affecting your family’s life.”

People such as Josephine — who are elderly, or medically frail for other reasons — are now the classic victims of COVID-19.

And hundreds of Canada’s most vulnerable are still dying, every single week, with countrywide deaths stuck at stubbornly high levels in recent months, federal data shows.

That means Canadian families continue to lose loved ones to this virus on a regular basis, all while hospitals are still admitting seriously ill COVID-19 patients in the midst of ongoing staff shortages, surgery backlogs and a busy respiratory virus season.

“We all have sort of moved into another phase of living with the virus,” said Dr. Kali Barrett, a critical care physician with the University Health Network in Toronto.

“But for those at risk, the pandemic continues to be a real and legitimate threat.”

‘Completely different patient population’

The weekly death rate from COVID-19 in Canada has skyrocketed, then dipped, in dramatic peaks and valleys since it began spreading in early 2020.

But while weekly deaths dropped into the double digits at several points in 2020 and 2021, the tally hasn’t dipped below 137 throughout all of 2022. (The numbers are provided to the federal government by the provinces and territories, and no longer include Nunavut or the Northwest Territories.)

That shift follows provinces lifting public health restrictions, all while the Omicron family of sub-variants kept evolving to better evade our immune systems.

For nearly four months straight, weekly Canadian COVID-19 deaths have remained above 200 — and the latest available data shows there were 305 lives lost during the week of Oct. 16.

CBC News spoke to multiple physicians to get a sense of what’s behind that trend, and who’s dying of COVID-19 in late 2022. Canadians who are elderly, already battling multiple pre-existing health conditions, or undergoing immune-suppressing treatments such as chemotherapy all remain at a higher risk of dying.

Some are winding up in critical care, while others are now being treated for their illnesses and eventually dying in other settings, including other hospital wards.

Laura Moschitto shares old mementos, including a photo of her mother Josephine in her younger years, inside the living room of her home, a house in Etobicoke where her parents used to live. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

“It’s a completely different patient population than the earlier waves,” said Dr. Bram Rochwerg, a critical care physician with Hamilton Health Sciences in Hamilton, Ont.

He recounted the horror stories of COVID’s early days: Young, healthy adults becoming incredibly sick and winding up in intensive care on mechanical ventilation, or even extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), the highest form of life support.

“We’re not seeing those young, previously healthy, super-sick folks that we saw at the peak of Delta,” he said.

Dr. Gabriel Fabreau, an internal medicine physician in Calgary and an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, credits effective vaccines and treatments for that shift.

Vaccinated individuals — meaning those who completed their primary COVID-19 vaccine series and had at least one booster dose — were three times less likely to be hospitalized, and five times less likely to die from their illness, compared to unvaccinated Canadians, according to data from late August to late September 2022.

Fabreau said more recently, his seriously ill COVID-19 patients are typically medically frail, immunocompromised, or still unvaccinated.

Rochwerg, in Hamilton, agreed. “It’s older folks, it’s those with immune-compromised states on chemotherapy with advanced cancer, frail comorbidities, that are ending up getting sick with COVID-related illness,” he said.

“It’s extremely rare to see somebody that doesn’t have these comorbidities that ends up in the ICU sick with COVID.”

Canada’s hospital crunch leaves some waiting days for care

Waits for care in Canada’s emergency rooms are stretching on longer and longer. In Winnipeg, one woman says her uncle with end-stage cancer waited two days for care, while an ER physician says he’s pondered quitting over the ‘unacceptable’ situation.

Deaths among elderly, with comorbidities

The latest-available data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) suggests the trend persists across the country, with poorer outcomes observed for patients with more than one disease or condition. Those dying in hospital also skewed older than those who didn’t die, with a median age of 76 compared to 60.

Canadian COVID-19 patients with at least one comorbidity had an average hospital stay eight days longer than those without comorbidities, and a higher in-hospital death rate of 20 per cent compared to seven per cent.

South of the border, U.S. Centers for Disease Control data released in September also shows that while the overall mortality for patients hospitalized primarily for COVID-19 has dropped, seniors are still hardest hit.

The vast majority of 2022 deaths, at more than 80 per cent, were among those 65 and older, and three-quarters had three — or more — comorbidities.

But, to be clear, people juggling multiple health issues aren’t necessarily close to death.

Siblings Victor and Laura Moschitto stand on the front porch of the Toronto home where their mother Josephine used to live. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

In Toronto, the majority of patients with COVID-19 who are ending up in Barrett’s intensive care unit are already frail from cancer treatment. Many, she said, might have had years left to live before developing COVID-19.

“These were patients who may have — if they got through their chemotherapy — were going to fully recover and go back to a normal life,” she said.

Several physicians also noted other patients are admitted to hospital for different ailments but also test positive, while some catch the virus during their stays.

“There are hospital-acquired outbreaks that are continuing to happen that do account for some of those numbers that we’re seeing,” said Dr. Neeja Bakshi, an internal medicine physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton.

Those differences may muddy the data on why exactly people are dying, but Barrett stressed that any time a patient is battling both COVID-19 and another health issue, it heightens their risk of poor outcomes.

COVID hospitalizations rising

The high number of patients falling ill with this virus threatens to further strain Canadian health-care systems this winter.

“We simply cannot expand any further and we don’t have the resources to go into the season,” Bakshi warned. “And I can tell you that nobody in any level of hospital administration or clinical care is sleeping easy.”

Canada-wide, the number of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients increased from 3,875 to more than 4,100 between Oct. 17 and 24, federal data shows.

Even if just a small percentage of COVID-19 patients are still falling seriously ill, that’s capable of adding a huge amount of stress to health-care systems, Rochwerg said.

“Our capacity to deal with critically ill patients right now has never been lower than it is at this moment in time,” he said.

Doctors brace for busy flu season with hospitals already under pressure

Doctors are bracing for flu season to peak, with hospitals already feeling the strain of COVID-19 and RSV, and wait times ballooning. Their message: wear a mask, get your flu shot and get a COVID-19 booster.

The sickest COVID-19 patients are now being cared for across hospital wards more broadly, including emergency departments and inpatient wards that are also facing pressure from other respiratory illnesses, from influenza to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

That’s layering on top of efforts to catch up on a backlog of thousands of surgeries and procedures, all while more Canadians are expected to present to hospitals with more serious forms of cancer or lingering health impacts from prior COVID-19 infections — all ripple effects from this years-long pandemic.

“It’s led to truly a perfect storm,” Rochwerg said.

Seniors, loved ones urged to take precautions

As the temperature dips and Canadians spend more time indoors, inadvertently spreading viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, influenza and RSV, physicians say it’s critical that vulnerable seniors and their families take precautions.

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics for Sinai Health and the University Health Network in Toronto, recommended all Canadian seniors consider getting three different shots this fall season: An updated bivalent COVID-19 booster, annual flu shot and pneumonia vaccine if they’re eligible.

“You can actually get all three of those at the same time,” Sinha said.

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto says the key concern in continuing care homes right now is staffing shortages (Ousama Farag/CBC)

Elderly Canadians living in long-term care facilities or retirement homes might have an easier time accessing these shots, Sinha said.

The bigger concern? Seniors living independently in communities, who may require help from family members or neighbours.

Loved ones should also consider taking extra care around any-at risk relatives, Sinha added. That could mean some combination of being vaccinated, wearing a quality mask, or taking a COVID-19 rapid test before family events this fall and winter.

The loneliness will just kill you alone,” Sinha said. “The idea is, try to live your life, but do so safely.”

‘A bigger risk than we realize’

As the Moschitto family continues mourning the recent loss of 89-year-old Josephine, her children take comfort knowing they tried to protect her, and that her retirement home was vigilant in maintaining COVID-19 precautions.

“You can’t stop it, at some point, from infiltrating you — it’s hard to deal with,” Victor said. “But you have to at some point come to accept what happened.”

Josephine Moschitto, shown in this family photographer with her late husband, passed away on Oct. 9 from COVID-19 at the age of 89. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

Still, both siblings hoped Josephine had a few more years left to live.

A few more years filled with morning conversations about how long it took her to guess the day’s Wordle, or family dinners featuring her beloved recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, or moments spent with her three grandchildren.

“People want to return to normal, but you know, maybe there is a bigger risk than we realize with that return to normalcy,” Victor said.

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Child care in Canada: Trudeau unveils new help for providers – CTV News

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The federal government is launching a new loan program to help child-care providers in Canada expand their spaces, and will be extending further student loan forgiveness and training options for early childhood educators, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Thursday.

The prime minister unveiled a trio of child-care-centric commitments that will be included in the upcoming federal budget, with the aim of opening up more $10-a-day child-care spaces across the country, as the Liberals continue to work towards creating 250,000 new spaces by March 2026.

Specifically, the Liberals are vowing to offer $1 billion in low-cost loans and $60 million in non-repayable grants to public and not-for-profit child-care providers, so they can build or renovate their care centres. 

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This funding will be administered through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMCH), which Trudeau called “a common sense approach that will help child care be developed alongside housing.”

An additional $48 million is being earmarked for the next four years to extend student loan forgiveness — similar to the program offered to rural doctors and nurses — to early childhood educators, in an effort to incentivize more teachers to work in smaller communities. 

The federal government is also promising $10 million over the next two years to train more early childhood educators.

The prime minister, speaking in Surrey, B.C., alongside the minister currently leading the file, Jenna Sudds, touted the bilateral child-care agreements in effect across the country for seeing thousands of children placed in affordable spaces.

However, in recent months Canadian parents and care providers have sounded alarms about increasingly long daycare waitlists. And, operators in some provinces have threatened to withdraw from the lower-cost program because they’re struggling to make ends meet. 

Trudeau said while the government has funded 100,000 spaces so far and is aware of the challenges in rolling out this new national program, not enough families have access and not all provinces are moving as fast as they should. 

“I want to take a moment to talk to young moms, many of you millennials. You’ve grown up with so many pressures in this economy, the 2008 recession, COVID, climate change … and we want to make sure that everyone — especially moms raising kids — has the best chance to succeed and thrive,” Trudeau said.

“As Canada grows, as families grow, we want to make sure more kids can access high-quality child care… That’s what fairness for every generation is all about.”

The prime minister also got political, accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of opposing the program, despite the Official Opposition voting in support of a recently passed Liberal piece of legislation meant to enshrine in law a commitment to the Canada-wide early learning and child-care system, and the long-term funding needed to maintain it. 

Reacting to the news, NDP MP and critic for children, families, and social development Leah Gazan said the announcement was a “direct result of advocacy” by her party, care workers, unions, and women’s organizations.

She also pointed the finger at the Conservatives, accusing them of trying to stall the program and push for a “for-profit private system that parents can’t afford.” 

Liberal pre-budget strategy

Similar to how Wednesday’s rollout of renter-fairness-focused pre-budget news went, cabinet ministers are making echo announcements of the new child-care affordability measures across the country Thursday afternoon. 

This is all part of a new communications strategy the Liberals are employing in the lead up to the release of the April 16 federal budget.

Practically every day between now and when Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland releases the massive economic document, the Liberals are expected to tease out bits and pieces of the budget.

In an effort to stretch out their ability to market the measures within it, Trudeau as well as members of his cabinet will unveil new initiatives over the next two weeks, to the point that the vast majority of the budget will be public prior to budget day.

Traditionally, governments have held budget news — save for some pre-tabling leaks — for the day the document is tabled in the House of Commons post-daylong reporter and stakeholder lockup.

Kicking off this strategy on Wednesday, Trudeau issued a video across social media platforms indicating the overall theme for the 2024 budget will be “generational fairness,” a message meant to speak to millennials and Generation Z.

“When I first decided to run for office, one of my biggest motivations was working to create a Canada that young people saw themselves… As prime minister, I’ve never lost sight of that,” Trudeau said in the clip.

“You as a young Canadian are the heartbeat of our economy. You power our growth and you deserve an economy that gives you a fair shot at success. But, this moment we’re all living in is throwing big challenges your way… So we’re going to roll up our sleeves and work like hell. And we’re going to tell you about what we’re doing to fix it, over the next two weeks.”

While Trudeau’s 2015 election victory was credited in part to a historic surge in young people turning up at the polls, Poilievre has been chipping away at that Liberal voting bloc of those aged 43 and under, seeking to appeal to their current struggles to get ahead with his “powerful paycheques” and housing affordability arguments.

In November 2023, Trudeau tapped Max Valiquette, a marketing guru with self-described expertise in understanding younger generations, as his new executive director of communications.

“We’re witnessing a different communication strategy from the government. They’re implementing something they’ve not tried before. We’re not going to have a budget day on April 16. We’re going to have budget days between now and April 16,” said political commentator Scott Reid in an interview on CTV News Channel.

“Frankly, this government knows that it needs to break through, it knows that it needs to connect with Canadians… Is it going to turn around the polls overnight? No. Might they get a little bit more of a hearing than they otherwise would have been? Probably.” 

With files from CTV News’ Vassy Kapelos and Annie Bergeron-Oliver

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Ontario releases 2023 Sunshine List, top earner made $1.9M – CBC.ca

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Five employees at Ontario Power Generation are in the top 10 earners on the province’s so-called sunshine list for 2023, with the province’s highest salary nearing $2 million.

The annual sunshine list documents public sector employees with salaries over $100,000. In this year’s edition, there are 300,570 names, more than 30,000 higher than last year.

Kenneth Hartwick, CEO of the electricity Crown corporation, is in the top spot again with a salary of $1.93 million.

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Two other executives at the organization — chief strategy officer Dominique Miniere and chief projects officer Michael Martelli — made nearly $1.2 million and nearly $1 million, respectively.

You can find a list of the top 100 earners below.

The presidents and CEOs of the Hospital for Sick Children and the University Health Network are also in the top 10, earning around $850,000 each. So is Phil Verster, who is president and CEO of the provincial transit agency, Metrolinx, with a $838,097 salary.

Caroline Mulroney, president of the Treasury Board, highlighted other high growth areas in a release.

“The largest year-over-year increases were in the hospitals, municipalities and services, and post-secondary sectors, which together represented approximately 80 per cent of the growth of the list,” she said.

The list shows 17 professors or associate professors at the University of Toronto had earnings of $500,000 or more.

A statement from a University of Toronto spokesperson said the school competes with top universities and private-sector employers around the world for faculty members.

“This occasionally results in salaries above the usual range for a small number of faculty members.”

An Ontario Power Generation building.
Five employees at Ontario Power Generation are among the top 10 spots of the annual sunshine list for 2023. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press)

Premier Doug Ford earned $208,974 last year. His chief of staff, Patrick Sackville, earned $324,675.

Matthew Anderson, CEO of Ontario Health, a provincial agency the Ford government created in 2019, earned $821,000. Meanwhile the public servant leading the Ministry of Health, deputy minister Catherine Zahn, earned $477,360, and Health Minister Sylvia Jones, $165,851.

There are more than 25,000 registered nurses on the list, including seven who earned more than $300,000 last year.

Chief Justice Sharon Nicklas, who was appointed to the top post in the province’s judiciary last May, earned $388,960.

The police chiefs of Thunder Bay, Daniel Taddeo, ($376,428) and Hamilton, Francis Bergen, ($374,492) were paid more last year than OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique ($373,472). Taddeo retired in April 2023. 

Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw, who took over the post in late 2022, earned $353,411. 

Organizations that receive provincial government funding are also required to disclose salaries for the sunshine list, so it includes top earners at some registered charities.

The chief executive of the True Patriot Love Foundation, Nicholas Booth, earned $421,149. The foundation funds support programs for veterans and military families. 

The president and CEO of the Canadian Red Cross Society, Conrad Sauve, earned $412,970, while the YMCA of Greater Toronto’s chief executive, Medhat Mahdy, earned $394,057.

Salaries of other key Ontario public figures include:

  • $826,539 for Ontario Pension Board CEO Mark Fuller.
  • $709,581 for Ontario Lottery and Gaming Association president & CEO Alfred Hannay.
  • $601,376 for Registered Nurses Association of Ontario CEO Doris Grinspun.
  • $596,392 for Dean of Ivey Business School, Western University, Sharon Hodgson.
  • $563,291 for LCBO president & CEO George Soleas.
  • $546,053 for Dean of the Faculty of Health Science, Queen’s University, Jane Philpott.
  • $533,112 for Royal Ontario Museum president & CEO Joshua Basseches.
  • $486,192 for University of Toronto president Meric Gertler.
  • $464,148 for Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore.
  • $455,091 for Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer.
  • $404,003 Art Gallery of Ontario director and CEO Stephan Jost.
  • $395,974 for former auditor general Bonnie Lysyk.

Adjusting sunshine list threshold

The sunshine list has been around for almost 30 years, always set at six figures and up. 

At Queen’s Park on Thursday, some members of provincial Parliament faced questions on whether the $100,000 starting point should be adjusted.

Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner said it should be pegged to the rate of inflation, but others disagreed.

“I think that people think that $100,000 is still a lot of money, especially in an affordability crisis,” said NDP MPP Catherine Fife, who’s also the finance critic.

Government House Leader Paul Calandra said the government has no plans at this time to change the threshold on the sunshine list.

“I think it’s an important document that serves the people well in highlighting the salaries of our public employees.”

The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, enacted by former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris in 1996, compels organizations that receive public funding from the province to report the names, positions and pay of people who make more than $100,000.

The interactive chart below shows the top 100 earners on the list, based on both salary and benefits.

Search the complete Sunshine List for yourself here.

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1 dead, 2 critically injured after car crash in Montreal

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Montreal

Three people are in hospital with critical injuries after their vehicle crashed into a tree. Police believe they might be connected to two drive-by shootings that took place early Thursday morning.

2 drive-by shootings also took place overnight

an SPVM car near a taped-off crime scene
Montreal police are investigating a car crash possibly linked to two drive-by shootings. (Mathieu Wagner/Radio-Canada)

Urgences-santé say one person died and two others were critically injured after their vehicle hit a tree in the Rosemont neighbourhood.

Montreal police believe the crash may be linked to two drive-by shootings early Thursday morning.

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The first happened around 5 a.m. on Pie-IX Boulevard. Police say a car was shot at repeatedly and the driver, a 41-year-old man, was injured in the upper body. He was transported to hospital, but his life is not in danger, say police.

Shortly afterward, shots were reported in the Plateau Mont-Royal borough, near the intersection of Saint-Joseph Boulevard and Henri-Julien Avenue. No one was injured.

Police say they are investigating to determine if there is a connection between the collision and the shootings. Montreal police spokesperson Jean-Pierre Brabant says it’s possible those in the vehicle were involved in the shootings.

The province’s independent police watchdog is now involved.

with files from Chloë Ranaldi

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