Manitoba COVID deaths take weeks to be counted

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This article was published 27/12/2022 (631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the past two months, fewer than 15 Manitobans have reportedly died of COVID-19 — but during that same time frame, Manitoba’s pandemic death toll has retroactively grown by 70.

The province continues to update its death and hospitalization counts weeks after those patients died or were admitted to hospital. Throughout the pandemic, public health officials relied on hospitalizations and death data to measure the crisis in health care. Those lagging indicators of severe outcomes remain one of the most important tools for health officials to assess COVID-19 risk.

No new COVID-19 deaths were recorded in Manitoba’s most recent epidemiological respiratory virus report, issued last week, but 26 additional deaths were added to the province’s cumulative death count.

Manitoba’s total is at 229 lives lost in the fall’s virus season, as of Dec. 17.

It’s the highest jump in retroactively added deaths since the province changed the format of its epidemiological reports on the presence of COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses in Manitoba. The new format, introduced in early November, means current reports and the death toll numbers they contain can’t be compared to the weekly reports that were published prior to this winter.

Asked about the recent increase to Manitoba’s death toll, a provincial government spokesperson stated an automated internal reporting system usually provides timely data, but delays can affect the timing of reporting a death.

“The delay in COVID-19 associated death reports is influenced by a variety of factors, including but not limited to: time to notification and confirmation of death, data entry, and post-mortem investigations,” the spokesperson stated.

“This is a busy time of year for Public Health and the collection and provision of COVID-19 analysis are a subset of many competing priorities for Manitoba’s dedicated health-care professionals.”

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations increased by 2,162 from Nov. 6 to Dec. 17, according to the retroactively revised cumulative totals included in each weekly report during that time period. Over the course of one week, 69 hospitalizations were retroactively added to the province’s count, between the week of Dec. 4 to 10 and Dec. 11 to 17.

Prof. Tara Moriarty, a COVID-19 mortality researcher who co-founded COVID-19 Resources Canada, said cumulative totals deserve close attention.

Those numbers may be a close approximation of what’s currently happening in hospitals, she said, even though Manitoba, like most provinces, no longer includes any information about when those retroactively added hospitalizations and deaths occurred. Current death rates attributed to COVID-19 are high across the country, as people who had avoided infection become ill amid skyrocketed infection rates, Moriarty said.

“Many of the infections we’re seeing now are in older people. That’s part of why we’re seeing significantly higher numbers of deaths per infections than we were at previous stages of Omicron. That’s happening across the country, it’s not just Manitoba.”

Moriarty’s research has shown there’s about a six-week lag between when COVID-19 deaths occur and when they’re reported by the province of Quebec, which is the fastest province to report its data.

“In general, the total numbers are a pretty good approximation of what we will see about six weeks from now,” Moriarty said.

She said a lot of provinces’ COVID-19 data are “taking pains to emphasize” only hospitalizations or deaths that occurred within the past week, but focusing only on those numbers obscures the bigger picture.

“I think it’s an attempt to, I guess, help the general public feel that things are a bit better than the numbers suggest.”

It’s likely 25 per cent more Manitobans are dying of COVID-19 than are being reported provincially, COVID-19 Resources Canada estimates.

That estimate puts Manitoba’s death reporting near the top nationally, second only to Quebec.

Across the country, the actual number of COVID-19 deaths could be more than twice as high as what’s being reported in each province, Moriarty said.

She said it’s tough to get accurate estimates because most provinces are “incredibly far behind” in reporting deaths to Canada’s national vital statistics death database.

Manitoba hasn’t reported any deaths to the database since October 2021, Moriarty said.

Manitoba broadened its COVID-19 death definition on March 15, 2022, changing it from a death due to COVID-19 to a death “associated with” COVID-19.

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com