MONTREAL — Researchers are having a hard time explaining why Quebec had the country’s highest official COVID-19 death toll despite a relatively low number of excess deaths between March 2020 and October 2021.
A new study released Monday by the Canadian Medical Association Journal tried to answer that question but came up short.
“I would say at this point it’s something we need to understand,” Kimberlyn McGrail, professor at University of British Columbia’s school of population and public health, said in an interview.
The study, “Excess mortality, COVID-19 and health-care systems in Canada,” says Quebec had 4,033 excess deaths between March 2020 and October 2021 but reported 11,470 COVID-19 fatalities — almost three times more. It’s the biggest gap recorded in Canada during the pandemic. Excess deaths refer to the degree to which observed deaths exceed expected deaths based on modelling from previous years.
McGrail said she observed too many factors to offer a definitive answer.
“Quebec was an interesting case,” she said. “What we see is that in Quebec, you have these periods where there are high excess mortalities, but you also have periods where the excess mortality rates are below zero, meaning that there were less mortalities in those weeks than were predicted.”
Between February 2021 and July 2021, for example, Quebec’s mortality rate was lower than in pre-pandemic years, yet officials in the province were reporting up to 10 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people every day.
“I don’t have a definitive answer,” McGrail said. “That’s part of the reason I was interested in writing the paper, because of the number of things that could play into this.”
One reason that could explain the gap, she said, is that Quebec officials were testing many people who — for reasons unrelated to COVID-19 — were already close to death.
“Quebec was doing more testing, particularly with people who were clearly near the end of their life,” McGrail said. “They were maybe picking up people who had COVID-19 who were truly going to die in the next days or weeks regardless.”
Earlier in May, Quebec’s statistical institute released a report indicating there had been 6,400 excess deaths between the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and March 12, 2022. The province had officially reported more than 15,000 COVID-19 deaths during that period.
In response to the report, Premier François Legault said the data from the Institut de la statistique du Québec indicated the health orders his government had imposed had worked to reduce death in the province. “What this says is that the measures that we put in place over the past two years have had results,” he said at the time.
McGrail’s study indicated that Nova Scotia had the lowest proportion of COVID-19 deaths to excess deaths. The province reported 98 COVID-19 deaths during March 2020 and October 2021, yet there were 217 fewer people who died during that period compared with what was expected based on prior years.
While McGrail was cautious to give definitive answers to explain the gap between Quebec’s excess death rate and its COVID-19 mortality rate, Frédéric Fleury-Payeur, with the province’s statistical institute, offered several theories.
One explanation, he said Monday in an interview, is that older people stayed inside more than usual between March 2020 and October 2021, leading to less opportunities to hurt themselves.
“Falls among older people are still quite an important cause of death,” Fleury-Payeur said. “It leads to a hip fracture or other bones, and since the elderly have been less mobile during periods of isolation and the curfew, it could have played a role.”
Another explanation, he said, is that Quebec doctors included COVID-19 as a cause of death in medical reports more liberally than doctors in other provinces did. He said it’s known in Canada’s medical community that medical reports in Quebec are more detailed than in other provinces.
“We have known for quite a long time that there are more details in the cause-of-death section in Quebec (medical reports) than in other provinces,” Fleury-Payeur said. “When the pandemic began, were Quebec doctors, by habit or tradition, more sensitive to identifying every suspicious COVID-19 death and reporting it?”
Fleury-Payeur said a full portrait of the situation would be available when all the coroners’ reports involving deaths during the pandemic are made public and studied.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 30, 2022.
—
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors.
Bizarre Sunlight Loophole Melts Belly Fat Fast! is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked.
