A mysterious spike in “excess” deaths in New Brunswick that began last summer when the Delta variant of COVID-19 began to spread in the province led to 636 more deaths than normal over a 20-week period, according to new estimates.
That’s an apparent mismatch with the 79 COVID deaths New Brunswick reported over the 20 weeks.
On Wednesday, Health Minister Dorothy Shephard told the legislature she doesn’t know why deaths have risen so high, but said she doubts it was caused by undetected COVID cases.
“We’ve been extremely transparent with our COVID-19 numbers and our COVID-19 deaths,” Shephard said during question period.
“I can’t explain those numbers at this time, but the department has been asked to review them, and will do so as we go through our evaluations,” he said.
In an ongoing study of what it calls “provisional death counts and excess mortality” related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Statistics Canada reported new figures this week.
The figures show that as of the week of July 17, 2021 and through the week of November 27, New Brunswick experienced 636 more deaths than would normally be expected to occur in that period.
Excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic are thought to be related to the effects of the virus circulating in the community, although the exact links to individual deaths are not necessarily known.
Important for measuring ‘excess’ deaths StatsCan:
Some deaths are directly caused by the virus, but others may be caused by other factors, such as delayed or canceled medical procedures due to pandemic restrictions.
“To understand the direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic, it is important to measure excess mortality, which occurs when there are more deaths than expected in a given period,” writes Statistics Canada in an explanation of the importance of their study.
For New Brunswick, death estimates so far are only available through the end of November. But they show a distinctive rise in deaths that roughly coincides with the arrival of the delta variant of COVID-19 in the province last summer, along with the end of public health mask orders.
Death counts were higher than normal in every week of the 20-week period, a critical clue when something out of the ordinary claims lives, according to Statistics Canada.
“There is evidence of excess mortality when weekly deaths are consistently higher than the expected number, but especially when they exceed the expected range for several consecutive weeks,” he writes in an explanation of the importance of sustained high death counts.
The 636 “excess” deaths detected in New Brunswick were 22 percent more than the number expected during the period. More disconcerting is that this was despite New Brunswick reporting a limited number of COVID deaths.
Excess death figures similar to New Brunswick’s were reported in Saskatchewan (731) and Quebec (681) at the same time, but each province also reported more than 340 COVID deaths to help explain those numbers.
Investigator Suspects Inadequate Testing
Last month, Tara Moriarty, an associate professor and infectious disease researcher at the University of Toronto, said the excess deaths in New Brunswick are likely COVID-19 cases that the province missed due to inadequate testing and tracking of cases. .
“Most provinces, including New Brunswick, only report COVID deaths if there is a positive PCR test associated with them,” Moriarty said.
“A large part of why COVID deaths are underreported is because there is limited access to PCR testing and New Brunswick has been underreported for quite some time compared to Quebec, for example.”
Shephard rejected that idea in the legislature, and later, in an email to CBC News, his department said there is no reason to believe more people died from COVID-19 in New Brunswick last summer and last fall than what the government reported.
“Our hospital services were operating within capacity and extensive PCR testing within hospitals and long-term care facilities was providing reliable data to our COVID-19 trackers on infections and deaths,” the department spokeswoman wrote, Michelle Guenard, who noted that Statistics Canada data is “provisional.” and subject to revisions.
“The observed excess deaths are unlikely to be directly attributable to COVID-19,” he said.
Reference-www.cbc.ca