British Columbia has had more deaths than any other province in the first 18 months of the pandemic, according to a new analysis.
This finding resumes research into how many of these deaths were due to COVID-19.
In a paper from the Canadian Medical Association Journal entitled “Excessive Mortality, COVID-19 and Health Systems in Canada,” a professor at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health found that Western Canada had the highest number of deaths in the country, with BC records the highest share. from everyone.
“It’s really COVID – plus COVID-related things like delayed care, plus other things that happen,” author Kim McGrail said in an interview with CTV News, noting that the thermal dome and the toxic drug crisis are playing roles, but the pandemic is the key.
“People with delayed surgery, people who have had delayed diagnoses of new conditions and delayed treatment for ongoing conditions – they could all contribute. What we don’t know at the moment is the relative contribution of each of them. “
She said public health measures, such as masks and other precautions, vary widely depending on the province, as well as access to medical care. But there were also differences in how or whether the deaths were attributed to the virus – with BC having an extremely low official number.
Reporting practices by provincial public health agencies have probably been affected by decisions on whether to classify deaths as people whose primary cause of death is COVID-19 (those who died “from” COVID-19) , and people who have been infected with SARS -CoV-2, whose underlying cause of death is different from COVID-19 (those who died with “COVID-19”) because they are related to COVID-19 “She wrote in the article.
HOW BIG IS THE DECREASE?
McGrail declined to say how high she thought BC’s mortality could be, but a previous study by the Royal Geographical Society of Canada estimates that the official provincial tax from the first days of COVID could be underestimated by up to half.
But the collection of academics and independent scientists, analysts and other experts at BC COVID-19 Modeling Group has for some time maintained that the province is minimizing the number of deaths and is focusing on the problem in its latest analysis.
“It’s very hard to think we haven’t underestimated,” said Jens von Bergmann, a senior Vancouver data scientist and member of the group. “With cumulative data coming in over two years, it seems pretty clear that all the official censuses that we have – even if I count the deaths from drug and heat dome toxicity – still have a lot of unexplained place, and that’s before we start we think that public health measures are likely to be effective in preventing other types of death, such as influenza. “
MINISTER DOUBLES EXCLUSIVITY OF BC
The health minister was asked about the latest analysis of BC’s over-mortality and declined to acknowledge that the official number may be inaccurate.
“There will always be discussions about the impact on public health of the various emergencies we face,” Adrian Dix said. “In BC, facts are just facts, and mortality is the lowest of any jurisdiction of its size in North America.
CTV News asked to speak with one of BC’s vital statistics agencies to find out more about how the data is collected, reported and analyzed, but the health ministry ignored the request and sent a lengthy statement via email instead.
“We note that the weeks in which over-deaths were highest in British Columbia were the weeks in which COVID transmission was lowest,” a spokesman said.
But it has long been known that deaths are a lagging indicator of infections, meaning that someone will die weeks after becoming infected, a pattern seen in BC with successive waves of the virus.
While McGrail’s analysis lasted from March 2020 to September 2021 alone and did not include the entire Delta wave or any of Omicron’s, he suggested that there was still much to learn from her work: the BC idea had more few deaths from COVID-19 is a statement that fades in trust, public health officials should expect not to detect many deaths due to the virus in the community, and could respond much better to deaths – whether due to reduced medical care, a new option, extreme weather conditions, drug toxicity or something else – if they had more timely information.
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