"Environ le tiers des Québécois à qui on a attribué la cause du décès à la COVID-19 lors de la première vague seraient très probablement morts d’autres causes dans les semaines suivantes"
About a third of Quebeckers for whom their cause of death was attributed to covid-19 in the first wave would most likely have died from other causes in the following weeks, suggests a newly published demographic study by two HEC Montreal researchers.
Quebec has seen excess mortality between March and June: about 4,300 more deaths than usual for that period.
Here's the seasonal pattern of influenza and pneumonia in Ontario.
Look familiar?
Hospitalizations for influenza and pneumonia peak at 27/100,000 in January and hit trough at 11/100,000.
Multiplying by 147 to adjust for Ontario's population, that would be a range of 1,617 in August to 3,969 in January.
Could covid simply be displaying its seasonality? If that's the case, this isn't a second wave; it's autumn.
Look at the trend of covid-linked hospitalizations below - keeping in mind that we didn't have mass PCR testing for covid last winter, but ramped it up in the spring.
330 deaths by or with covid-19 from a population of 1,381,739.
So clearly, a lot of "cases" (positive test results) but very few deaths relative to the size of this urban area.
What about hospitals?
Trillium Health Partners, which operates two hospitals in Mississauga and one close by in Toronto, reports a staggering... 33 patients confirmed positive with covid-19.