Mysterious spike in N.B. deaths in 2021 not due to COVID, health minister says
CBC
A mysterious spike in "excess" deaths in New Brunswick that began last summer as the COVID-19 Delta variant began spreading in the province saw 636 more deaths than normal over a 20-week period, according to new estimates.
That is an apparent mismatch with the 79 COVID deaths New Brunswick reported during the 20 weeks.
On Wednesday, Health Minister Dorothy Shephard told the legislature she does not know why deaths jumped so high, but said she doubts it was caused by undetected COVID cases.
"We have been extremely transparent with our COVID-19 numbers and our COVID-19 deaths," Shephard said during question period.
"I cannot explain those numbers at this actual moment, but the department has been asked to look at it, and it will do so as we progress through our evaluations," she 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 beginning the week of July 17, 2021, and extending through the week of Nov. 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 believed to be connected to the effects of the virus circulating in the community, although the exact links to individual deaths are not necessarily known.
Some deaths are caused by the virus directly, but some can be caused by other factors such as medical procedures delayed or cancelled because of 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," Statistics Canada writes in an explanation of the significance of its study.
In New Brunswick's case, death estimates are so far only available up to the end of November. But they show a distinct bump in fatalities that roughly coincides with the arrival of the COVID-19 delta variant in the province last summer, along with the ending of public health masking orders.
Death counts were higher than normal in each week of the 20-week period, a critical clue when something out of the ordinary is claiming 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 range of what is expected over several consecutive weeks," it writes in an explanation of the significance of sustained high death counts.
The 636 "excess" deaths detected in New Brunswick were 22 per cent more than the number expected during the period. More perplexing is that this was despite New Brunswick reporting a limited number of COVID deaths.
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