Health Notes

University of Toronto researcher raises a thorny question about COVID-19 death count in B.C.

by Charlie Smith on January 29th, 2022 at 4:55 AM
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      This weekend, B.C. is certain to cross another grim milestone.

      With 2,597 official deaths from COVID-19 so far, it's inevitable that  the province will surpass 2,600 when the Ministry of Health releases the latest statistics on Monday (January 31).

      On Friday (January 28), B.C. also reported that there were 990 "COVID-positive individuals" in hospital.

      At provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix's Friday briefing, a chart was presented showing that B.C. has far fewer deaths per capita than other large provinces.

      "B.C. has had, relative to other jurisdictions, some success but there have been real losses," Dix stated.

      The overall tone was that COVID-19 has been a gruelling fight over the past two years, but the province is doing the best that it can to stem the worst effects of the disease.

      This chart shows B.C.'s record of fatalities due to COVID-19 in comparison to other large provinces.

      Another chart showed that B.C.'s hospitalization rate has been lower than those of other large provinces.

      This chart shows B.C.'s record of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in comparison to other large provinces.

      This has offered British Columbians reassurance that the provincial government has responded competently to the pandemic.

      But an associate professor in the University of Toronto faculty of dentistry has publicly questioned whether B.C. might be under-reporting deaths due to COVID-19 to a degree far greater than other provinces.

      Dr. Tara Moriarty directs the Moriarty Lab, which researches blood-borne bacterial pathogens. She has a cross appointment in the University of Toronto's department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the faculty of medicine.

      In a long Twitter thread looking at the provincial fatality rates, Moriarty suggested that there is a "possible 5-fold under-detection/under-reporting" of COVID-19 deaths in B.C.

      She based this on "predicted new daily deaths for Omicron, based on age-specific mortality rates, vaccination rates, boosters, vaccine protection against death due to Omicron, how many people in each group live in a region, minus deaths reported so far in each region".

      Moriarty updates this information daily. 

      According to her analysis, Quebec is the only province in Canada with a COVID-19 death total that matches her estimate for expected deaths.

      This is an astonishing claim.

      Not surprisingly, Moriarty's analysis is generating a fair amount of discussion on social media, including among some doctors.

      Steve Morgan, a professor in UBC's School of Population and Public Health, encouraged his Twitter followers to read Moriarty's thread and then "ask questions accordingly".

      Here's the problem with Morgan's recommendation about asking questions accordingly: the vast majority of the population does not have the wherewithal to review whether hospitals and health authorities are accurately reporting COVID-19 death statistics.

      Yet this is an extremely serious issue, given the number of fatalities. That's aside from a growing controversy over whether the provincial government is responding appropriately to an airborne virus.

      B.C. Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has already called for an independent science table on COVID-19 and updated data on the ages of people hospitalized with COVID-19.

      In light of Moriarty's conclusion that B.C. has the fewest recorded deaths in comparison to expected deaths from COVID-19, don't be surprised if Furstenau's next demand will be for an independent review of COVID-19 deaths.

      B.C. Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has called for an independent science panel to evaluate the B.C. government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

      A vascular disease

      Part of the problem in evaluating whether someone died of COVID-19 is the widespread perception that it's a respiratory disease.

      In fact, there's a growing number of scientific experts who argue that it's actually a vascular disease with primary symptoms of a respiratory ailment.

      "Our Public Health officials insist on calling COVID a respiratory illness when clearly that is only the first phase of this complex syndrome," a group called Protect Our Province B.C. wrote in a January 17 open letter to Health Minister Adrian Dix. 

      "The concerning part of COVID-19 is the vascular injury which can manifest, often some time later, in damage to multiple organs, including the heart, lungs, liver and brain, causing long-term, life-changing illness for some," the letter continues. "Patients who develop the, as yet poorly understood, Post Covid syndrome or Long Covid suffer in silence and are classified in the statistics as 'recovered'."

      In her January 28 briefing—which came on the second anniversary of the first COVID-19 diagnosis—Henry did not mention that the disease is airborne or that it is vascular.

      In another briefing this month, Henry said that COVID-19 will need to managed like other respiratory diseases, such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and enteroviruses that cause the common cold.

      In a January 28 interview on CBC Radio One's The Current with Matt Galloway, Henry also maintained that there's a high level of immunity due to the extent of vaccination against COVID-19.

      "This is like a very bad influenza season," Henry told Galloway.

      She reiterated that the Omicron variant is causing "mostly mild illness". And she predicted that B.C. will have a "relatively gentle spring".

      "We have the tools to deal with what comes next—and we've learned that," Henry declared.

      She also claimed that there's "intentional disinformation" being spread that's intended "to foment fear".

       

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