Canada reaches 30K COVID deaths as country braces for Omicron impact

Ontario reported nine more COVID-19 deaths Thursday morning, pushing Canada's total just over 30,000 as Ottawa and some provinces tightened public health measures.

Canada has recorded its 30,000th COVID-19 death since the pandemic began in early 2020, surpassing a grim milestone just as the country braces for the potential fallout of surging infections driven by the Omicron variant.

Ontario reported nine more COVID-19 deaths Thursday morning, pushing Canada’s total just over 30,000 as Ottawa and some provinces tightened public health measures to stave threats posed by a more transmissible virus.

It took Canada nine months to reach 10,000 COVID-19 deaths last November, but the toll doubled to 20,000 just two months later in January 2021 — a leap that occurred before enough vaccines had been administered to have an impact. The country surpassed 25,000 COVID-19 deaths in May.

Since then, experts say vaccines have significantly reduced the number of people dying from the virus daily, with some estimates suggesting between 75 per cent and 90 per cent fewer deaths in each age group, compared to what would normally be expected.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said the arrival of vaccines a year ago — Canada administered its first jabs on Dec. 14, 2020 — resulted in a “dramatic shift” in the country’s COVID-19 epidemiology, with a particular drop in mortality rates.

The trajectory “dropped dramatically after the vaccines came into effect, and continues to be at a sustained at a lower level,” she said in a news conference Monday.

Dr. Tara Moriarty, a researcher at the University of Toronto, estimates vaccines “likely saved more than 476,000 lives in Canada to date.”

Roughly 40 per cent of Canada’s total COVID-19 fatalities have occurred since January and Moriarty said the vast majority of those 2021 deaths were among the unvaccinated.