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Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-deaths-canada-winter-2022-1.6637476
Hundreds of Canadians are still dying of COVID-19 every week. Who are they?
Deaths in Canada remain stubbornly high, with elderly often bearing the brunt in busy hospitals
Lauren Pelley · CBC News · Posted: Nov 02, 2022 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: November 2
....For nearly four months straight, weekly Canadian COVID-19 deaths have remained above 200 — and the latest available data shows there were 305 lives lost during the week of Oct. 16.
CBC News spoke to multiple physicians to get a sense of what's behind that trend, and who's dying of COVID-19 in late 2022. Canadians who are elderly, already battling multiple pre-existing health conditions, or undergoing immune-suppressing treatments such as chemotherapy all remain at a higher risk of dying.
Some are winding up in critical care, while others are now being treated for their illnesses and eventually dying in other settings, including other hospital wards...
"It's a completely different patient population than the earlier waves," said Dr. Bram Rochwerg, a critical care physician with Hamilton Health Sciences in Hamilton, Ont.
He recounted the horror stories of COVID's early days: Young, healthy adults becoming incredibly sick and winding up in intensive care on mechanical ventilation, or even extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), the highest form of life support.
"We're not seeing those young, previously healthy, super-sick folks that we saw at the peak of Delta," he said.
Dr. Gabriel Fabreau, an internal medicine physician in Calgary and an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, credits effective vaccines and treatments for that shift.
Vaccinated individuals — meaning those who completed their primary COVID-19 vaccine series and had at least one booster dose — were three times less likely to be hospitalized, and five times less likely to die from their illness, compared to unvaccinated Canadians, according to data from late August to late September 2022.
Fabreau said more recently, his seriously ill COVID-19 patients are typically medically frail, immunocompromised, or still unvaccinated.
Rochwerg, in Hamilton, agreed. "It's older folks, it's those with immune-compromised states on chemotherapy with advanced cancer, frail comorbidities, that are ending up getting sick with COVID-related illness," he said.
"It's extremely rare to see somebody that doesn't have these comorbidities that ends up in the ICU sick with COVID."
The latest-available data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) suggests the trend persists across the country, with poorer outcomes observed for patients with more than one disease or condition. Those dying in hospital also skewed older than those who didn't die, with a median age of 76 compared to 60.
Canadian COVID-19 patients with at least one comorbidity had an average hospital stay eight days longer than those without comorbidities, and a higher in-hospital death rate of 20 per cent compared to seven per cent. ..
Hundreds of Canadians are still dying of COVID-19 every week. Who are they?
Deaths in Canada remain stubbornly high, with elderly often bearing the brunt in busy hospitals
Lauren Pelley · CBC News · Posted: Nov 02, 2022 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: November 2
....For nearly four months straight, weekly Canadian COVID-19 deaths have remained above 200 — and the latest available data shows there were 305 lives lost during the week of Oct. 16.
CBC News spoke to multiple physicians to get a sense of what's behind that trend, and who's dying of COVID-19 in late 2022. Canadians who are elderly, already battling multiple pre-existing health conditions, or undergoing immune-suppressing treatments such as chemotherapy all remain at a higher risk of dying.
Some are winding up in critical care, while others are now being treated for their illnesses and eventually dying in other settings, including other hospital wards...
"It's a completely different patient population than the earlier waves," said Dr. Bram Rochwerg, a critical care physician with Hamilton Health Sciences in Hamilton, Ont.
He recounted the horror stories of COVID's early days: Young, healthy adults becoming incredibly sick and winding up in intensive care on mechanical ventilation, or even extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), the highest form of life support.
"We're not seeing those young, previously healthy, super-sick folks that we saw at the peak of Delta," he said.
Dr. Gabriel Fabreau, an internal medicine physician in Calgary and an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, credits effective vaccines and treatments for that shift.
Vaccinated individuals — meaning those who completed their primary COVID-19 vaccine series and had at least one booster dose — were three times less likely to be hospitalized, and five times less likely to die from their illness, compared to unvaccinated Canadians, according to data from late August to late September 2022.
Fabreau said more recently, his seriously ill COVID-19 patients are typically medically frail, immunocompromised, or still unvaccinated.
Rochwerg, in Hamilton, agreed. "It's older folks, it's those with immune-compromised states on chemotherapy with advanced cancer, frail comorbidities, that are ending up getting sick with COVID-related illness," he said.
"It's extremely rare to see somebody that doesn't have these comorbidities that ends up in the ICU sick with COVID."
The latest-available data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) suggests the trend persists across the country, with poorer outcomes observed for patients with more than one disease or condition. Those dying in hospital also skewed older than those who didn't die, with a median age of 76 compared to 60.
Canadian COVID-19 patients with at least one comorbidity had an average hospital stay eight days longer than those without comorbidities, and a higher in-hospital death rate of 20 per cent compared to seven per cent. ..