According to federal data, COVID-19 case counts are significantly lower than a year ago. Hospitalisations are higher than they were during the first two pandemic summers, although they are near their lowest levels since December 2021. And each week, less than 30 COVID-19 deaths are reported across the country.
However, due to restricted testing and undiagnosed or unreported COVID-19 deaths, the true toll COVID-19 continues to exact on Canadians remains unknown.
More people are dying in Canada than expected, according to a new metric that is more difficult to interpret. Excess mortality, often known as excess fatalities, is a computation of how many more deaths occur than are projected based on demographic considerations such as population increase and ageing.
According to Tara Moriarty, an infectious-disease researcher and co-founder of the grassroots group COVID-19 Resources Canada, estimated excess mortality fell in January and February, but the latest 2023 data show it is 15% to 20% higher than it was in 2020 and 2021. This is far lower than in 2022, “which was a horrific, really, really bad year in Canada,” but “it’s still higher than the first few years of the pandemic,” she said.
What excess mortality reveals about the current condition of the pandemic is unknown, thanks in part to Canada’s delayed, patchwork system of reporting deaths. However, it should not be dismissed, according to Dr. Moriarty, who is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
“We absolutely need to know why we have historically high levels of death,” she went on to say.
Her research calculates that over 90,500 extra deaths occurred in Canada from the start of the pandemic and June, which is roughly double the amount of Canadian deaths during WWII. This figure has been updated to account for deaths caused by drug overdoses, suicides, mass homicides, and a heat wave in British Columbia.
According to Public Health Agency of Canada data, the total number of COVID-19 deaths registered since the start of the pandemic is 53,216.
COVID-19 deaths account for nearly all extra mortality in other nations with prompt death reporting systems, such as the United Kingdom and France, according to Dr. Moriarty. The two numbers are very near to one other.
However, provinces in Canada lag in reporting to the official Canadian Vital Statistics Database, which collects information on all fatalities in the country, including the cause of death.
Dr. Moriarty stated that reporting during the first year of the epidemic is still incomplete. However, she stated that the majority of COVID-19 deaths recorded to the database for 2020 imply that COVID-19 is likely to be responsible for 90% of extra deaths that year.
In addition to those who have not yet been recorded, she believes there are many deaths caused by COVID-19 that have not been found or are not formally assigned to the condition. In some jurisdictions, for example, if someone developed a critical health condition as a result of an infection and died more than 28 days after testing positive for COVID-19, their death may not be deemed a COVID-19 death.
Excess mortality, according to Kim McGrail, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, is “an indication that there’s something happening that’s worth investigating,” but it doesn’t indicate what is actually happening or what to do about it.
Similarly, Statistics Canada stated in an e-mailed statement that exceptional excess deaths do not necessarily relate to COVID-19′s impact on Canada. Rather, they indicate the need for more investigation.
Statistics Canada stated that it employs a statistical model to estimate weekly expected fatalities based on mortality patterns from 2015 to 2019, while taking into account changes in age, gender, and total population.
Part of the problem, according to Dr. McGrail, is that there are many factors influencing mortality now that were not present before the pandemic. She explained that one would not try to forecast deaths in 2023 by looking at an average five-year period in the 1970s. Comparing mortality today with a model based on what it was before the epidemic is complicated by a number of circumstances, including the toxic drug issue and other public-health crises, she said.
Aside from deaths directly caused by COVID-19, people can die from the indirect or long-term impacts of infection, the pandemic’s mental-health repercussions, or delays in receiving medical treatment or surgery for other types of ailments, according to Dr. McGrail.
Even if it is determined that COVID-19 is not the cause of excess mortality, Dr. Moriarty believes the country must address COVID-19 because it is not going away and will continue to shorten people’s lives, put strain on the health-care system, potentially have long-term consequences for population health, including long COVID, and harm economic productivity.
She also stated that Canada must enhance its death-reporting system in order to respond to future emergencies more quickly, whether they are pandemics or the effects of climate change.
Furthermore, whatever the cause, she believes the country should pay attention to excess mortality. “Because clearly there are a lot of people dying that wouldn’t normally have.”
