No. 4 -- Canada surpasses 31,000 deaths

Yesterday, Canada surpassed 31,000 COVID-19 deaths. That is, official deaths, as we know that the numbers are likely nearly double what is being counted for reasons outlined here. There were a couple of passing news mentions of this milestone, but it made me wonder: just how fast did we hit 31,000 compared to our last thousand? And when were deaths rising the fastest during the pandemic?

We hit 30,000 deaths on December 16, 2021. That means it took 27 days to reach 31,000. Before that, it took 44 days to go from 29,000 deaths to 30,000. Omicron has run roughshod over a lot of the popuation and so this accelerated timeframe isn’t surprising. But how does it compare to other waves?

First off, here is a graph of what Canada’s COVID-19 deaths looks like:

I started at 5000 deaths because before this milestone on April 24, 2020, death reporting was such a mess that I couldn’t seem to find Canada hitting 3000 deaths (though I did find stories about how bad Canada’s death reporting systems are). You can see the second wave just at the turn of 2020 to 2021, and the third wave experienced by parts of Canada is wrapped up in the two inclines on either side of July 1 and Sept. 1 2021.

But it’s hard to see each time Canada’s deaths hit a new thousand. So I made this graph too:

You can see that at the start of the pandemic, deaths rose rapidly (remember that there are five thousands wrapped up in that first bar on May 11, 2020) and then deaths climbed rapidly again from Nov. 14 2020 to Feb. 7 2021. It was then that politicans allowed COVID-19 (and the boogeyman at the time, the Alpha variant) to run rampant in residential care especially, and we were seeing increases of 1000 deaths as fast as a week at a time.

Compare that to today and you can see that deaths are still not as quickly rising as they were then. Vaccines are working, there is more common immunity to the virus and we are controlling it better in vulnerable spaces. I like this perspective, because if I were to make my mind up based on the news, I’d be sure that we were back in March 2020 (which we are not!) In the chance that this perspective helps you too, I thought I’d send this out tonight.

Will we see similar death rates from Omicron that we saw last year at this time? I have no idea, but I do know that despite record-high hospitalizations in Ontario and Quebec, both provinces are below their respective ICU peaks from previous waves. A sliver of good news.

Healthcare worker deaths

Deaths among workers has fallen completely out of the news. This is because media have reported on these deaths with obituary-style journalism. When someone dies but their identity is unknown, it doesn’t warrant an article. Thanks to a tip-off from a Twitter friend, I’ve updated my numbers to match Alberta’s official count — there have now been 70 deaths (at least) of workers in healthcare.

Here’s the provincial/territorial breakdown:

Ontario : 32
Quebec: 19
AB: 10
BC: 3
MB: 4
SK: 2
NU: 1
NB: 1

Here’s the racial breakdown:

Black: 21
White: 12
Southeast Asian: 8
Latinx: 2
Arab: 2
South Asian: 2
Unknown/withheld: 20

Think I might be missing someone? You can see the list of each worker here.