A new peer-reviewed study shows British Columbia’s excess death rate surpassed every other province during the first 19 months of COVID-19, however the amount of those deaths actually attributed to the virus represents less than a quarter..Excess deaths are deaths above what would have been expected under normal circumstances, and the study uses Statistics Canada to look at the overall number of deaths from March 2020 to October 2021 in comparison to previous years..“Pretend the COVID-19 pandemic never happened,” said Dr. Kimberlyn McGrail, professor at UBC’s school of population and public health, and the study’s author during a Q & A..“People still would have died across Canada, and the number of deaths would have been somewhat predictable based on data from previous years.”.The portion of excess deaths in BC represented 11.4% of all deaths in the province, followed by Alberta at 11.1% and Saskatchewan at 10%..Despite a high proportion of excess deaths in western provinces, the report found little to no excess deaths in the Atlantic provinces.. Excess deaths and COVID-19 deaths by provinceExcess and COVID-19 mortality rates, March 14, 2020, to October 23, 2021 (March 14, 2020, to February 13, 2021, for Manitoba). Source: CMAJ .McGrail says a number of factors could have contributed to the variation between provinces — likely a combination of several..“For overall excess deaths, it could be because provinces differed in their responses to COVID-19,” she said..“It could be because of the additional public health events going on. Or it could be the broader implications of COVID-19, like cancelled surgeries and delayed diagnostics.”.McGrail referenced the summer of 2021’s heat dome, to which the BC Coroners Service has attributed nearly 600 deaths..“Some of the precautions with people being locked down limited activity and so on, might have contributed to how we responded to the heat dome, which in turn could have contributed to deaths,” said McGrail, further noting many older people live alone and didn’t have the usual level of social support during that time..BC has also been dealing with an increasingly tainted illicit drug supply, which McGrail says has been “potentially” affected by the pandemic..As for deaths attributed to COVID-19, the report shows numbers varying across provinces, as well as COVID-19 deaths as a percentage of excess deaths..The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, notes each province defines and counts COVID-19 deaths in different ways — a problem long-highlighted by some in BC..“We don’t differentiate people that have died from COVID and have died with it,” UBC professor Dr. Steven Pelech told the Western Standard in August 2021, underlining the same lack of distinction between hospitalizations with and due to a positive COVID-19 test..Eight months later BC provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry — in what was her first time saying so publicly — suggested half the province’s hospitalized COVID-19 patients had not been there as a result of a COVID infection, but rather varying reasons in which an "incidental" positive COVID test was present..McGrail's study calls for more consistent and comprehensive reporting of data nationwide, as well as a “collective forensic analysis of reasons for observed variations.".“Given the variation in excess mortality across provinces, it's really important we have a pan-Canadian conversation about trying to understand which potential causes are related to that, and come to some agreement about common data, timeliness and definitions,” said McGrail.
