After a difficult start to the pandemic, Quebec seems to have considerably improved its record in terms of excess mortality since the start of 2021. The province is even reporting fewer deaths than anticipated since the start of the year, new data reveal .
Since the start of 2021, Quebec has indeed observed a mortality that is 2% lower than forecast, according to new data from the Institute of Statistics (ISQ) released on Wednesday. This report contrasts with that of 2020, when COVID-19 had caused an excess mortality of 7% in the province. Faced with this trend reversal, Quebec is thus posting, after 18 months of the pandemic, an overall excess mortality of around 4%.
It is therefore official: Quebec is no longer the Canadian province with the heaviest toll since the start of the pandemic. This title now goes to Alberta, which has indeed posted an excess mortality of 13% since the start of 2021.
Meanwhile, among our neighbors to the south, global excess mortality reached 15% in 2020, then 17% since the start of 2021. In Canada, monthly peaks of excess mortality were also reached last summer, in July, in the wake of the forest fires that were raging heavily in the west of the country.
Many reasons can explain the differences in excess mortality, but the ISQ identifies two main ones. “There is first of all the anticipation of certain deaths which should normally have occurred in 2020 or 2021. As the deaths have been largely concentrated in CHSLDs, in places where there are many people at the end of their life, necessarily, there is there are people in there who were destined to die soon, ”explains demographer Frédéric Fleury-Payeur, in an interview with Press.
With the virus, some deaths have been brought forward by weeks, months or years, in short it is quite variable. In 2020, after the first wave where there were many deaths, this effect of reducing excess mortality was also felt.
Frédéric Fleury-Payeur, demographer at the Institut de la statistique du Québec
“Excess mortality (or excess mortality) is defined as the number of deaths from all causes that exceeds the expected number“ in normal times ”. “
Source: National Institute of Public Health of Quebec
The “protective” effect of health measures
Another factor, adds the demographer, could well be “the protective effect of health measures”, which have been maintained longer in Quebec than in other provinces. “Last winter, for example, these measures completely eradicated the circulation of influenza, which causes many deaths in normal times, from one season to the next. In 2018, we had 1,000 related deaths, ”says the expert.
Recall that unlike Quebec, which maintained more stringent health measures last summer, Alberta had for its part eliminated its own, before putting them back in place in the face of the sharp increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
In short, in the rest of Canada, excess mortality was “initially lower than that of Quebec, but it remained at a generally higher level from July 2020”, we note in the report of the ‘Institute filed Wednesday. “After 18 months of the pandemic, the death toll in the rest of Canada was similar to that of Quebec,” we also insist.
The authors of this report also reveal that life expectancy in Quebec in 2020 “is 80.6 years for men and 84.0 years for women, which represents respective drops of 6 and 9 months. compared to 2019 ”. “The magnitude of these declines, which can be explained by the excess mortality recorded due to COVID-19, is an exception, as life expectancy tends to increase over time. Life expectancy has also fallen in several countries, often even more markedly than in Quebec, ”they specify, however.
As for the future of excess mortality in Quebec, it remains difficult to pinpoint, says Fleury-Payeur. “The long-term effect is yet to be discovered. There have been great concerns with the new variant [Omicron], but the news is pretty good on this side. The fact remains that it is really too early to make any assumptions about what will happen in the longer term. Both negative and positive factors, such as technological developments over the past year, could come into play, ”he says.