Canada marks 25,000 COVID-19 deaths
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TORONTO, Canada (CTV Network) — Canada has marked 25,000 COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic started.
The country reached the grim milestone on Tuesday, after Ontario reported an additional 17 deaths related to the disease.
Many younger Canadians succumbed to the disease in recent months, as the third COVID-19 wave overwhelmed hospitals, especially in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. But the majority of deaths have occurred in long-term care homes across the country. A March 2021 report released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) found that Canada had the worst record for COVID-19 deaths in long-term care homes compared to other countries.
The CIHI report states that between March 2020 and February 2021, more than 80,000 residents and staff of long-term care homes were infected, with outbreaks occurring in 2,500 care homes – resulting in 14,000 resident deaths.
In Ontario, a military report submitted to the province’s Long-Term Care Home Commission referenced “heartbreaking” and “horrifying” conditions leading to several deaths in two of the Toronto facilities the military assisted with during the initial stages of the pandemic.
WILL WE EVER KNOW THE TRUE DEATH TOLL?
However, the actual death toll may be higher than what is currently being tallied.
Examination of “excess deaths,” which is when there are more deaths during a period of time than what would be expected, has been higher than the COVID-19 death tolls reported by provinces.
Previous analysis by Tara Moriarty, a professor of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at the University of Toronto, found that Canada had more than 3,000 excess deaths during the first nine months of the pandemic that weren’t attributed to COVID-19.
Tracking and identifying every person who has died from COVID-19 is also extremely tricky, as people suspected of having COVID-19 can die before being tested, and a lack of resources means death investigations and autopsies can be scarce.
Analysis of deaths, excess or otherwise, may take Statistics Canada several years to compile.
THE HISTORY OF OTHER DEADLY PANDEMICS
Smallpox ravaged First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities when it first spread from French settlers in the 17th century. Entire populations were decimated, some losing 75 to 90 per cent of their communities to the disease, which was sometimes purposefully spread from colonists, or associated starvation.
It’s estimated 20,000 Canadians died in the 1847 typhus epidemic, and the Spanish Flu which struck Canada between 1918 to 1920, killed approximately 55,000 people, most of them young adults.
Nearly 25,000 people in Canada have died from HIV/AIDS over the past 40 years, according to advocacy group CATIE. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 resulted in 44 deaths.
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