1) In a little-noticed change, Québec’s public health institute has quietly stopped posting international comparisons on the province’s #COVID death rates. In this thread, I will show why this and other data suppression is blinding Québecers to the true state of the #pandemic.
2) The Institut nationale de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) discontinued international COVID death comparisons about a month after Premier François Legault asserted that they weren’t fair as the province just happened to be going through its 2nd deadliest wave in the #pandemic.
3) Legault instead focused public attention on Québec’s excess deaths from months earlier to show it was faring much better in the #pandemic than other provinces even though its #COVID mortality rate on Jan. 18 was the highest among all wealthy jurisdictions around the world.
4) The INSPQ’s decision to discontinue posting international #COVID mortality comparisons once again raises questions as to whether it felt pressured politically to do so. An INSPQ source told me that was not the case about a month before these comparisons were actually dropped.
5) The INSPQ’s decision also follows another puzzling one by Québec authorities on Jan. 7 to stop providing statistics on outbreaks in schools, the workplace and daycares. See the chart below for the explanation by the Montréal public health department.
6) Months earlier, the Québec government had stopped funding #COVID19 analyses of sewage water to track the #pandemic even though experts have universally agreed that doing so makes scientific sense and is in the public’s interest.
7) Earlier this week, Dr. Tara Moriarty of the University of Toronto — an expert whom Legault has often cited — warned Ontario's latest wastewater signals suggest that province might be sailing into another #COVID19 wave. But wastewater analysis in Québec is sadly non-existent.
8) Québec, like many jurisdictions around the world, has also discontinued widespread #COVID screening even as it proceeds to lift public health protections. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove (@mvankerkhove) of the World Health Organization criticized such lax testing earlier this week.
9) Yet the #pandemic is far from over, Dr. Van Kerkhove insisted, with #COVID cases rising in the Western Pacific. South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are all now struggling with rising #COVID infections and deaths driven by the much more contagious #Omicron variant of concern.
10) Here in Québec, the province is still reporting far more #COVID deaths than for the corresponding period last year. Thus, Québec cannot argue that this is just because it’s backfilling lots of fatalities from weeks earlier. See the cart below.
11) True, international #COVID comparisons are inherently problematic because each jurisdiction’s #pandemic record-keeping is slightly different. And some jurisdictions like Florida have notoriously suppressed data on deaths.
12) But this record-keeping (as imperfect as it is), along with #COVID screening and wastewater analysis, are our best available tools to try to gauge how the #pandemic is evolving and to keep the public well-informed, so necessary during this unprecedented crisis. End of thread.
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1) New Zealand, which for so long had fended off the #pandemic with well-planned public health protections, is now in the grip of an #Omicron-driven wave. But unlike Hong Kong where #COVID deaths are soaring, New Zealand is faring much better. In this thread, I will explain why.
2) First, though, let us examine the current state of contagion in New Zealand, a progressive island nation of more than 5 million people. The country reported 14,633 new cases of #COVID19 in the community on Monday as it carries out widespread testing, unlike in Canada.
3) New Zealand’s Ministry of Health has declared 344 patients in hospital being treated for #COVID, with five in the ICU. That compares with 1,446 such hospitalizations in Québec, which has a population 8.6 million and which has often resorted to half measures in the #pandemic.
1) Hong Kong has resorted to erecting makeshift modular hospitals from China and building #COVID isolation facilities amid an unprecedented spike in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. All this is being driven by BA.2., the stealth sub-variant of the #Omicron coronavirus.
2) Hong Kong declared on Monday more than 26,000 #COVID infections from the day before, the highest than at any other point in the #pandemic. Hong Kong’s health chief confirmed that authorities will not rule out locking down the entire city of 7.4 million to conduct mass testing.
3) Until #Omicron and BA.2 hit Hong Kong, the special administrative region had handled the #pandemic relatively well by using a #ZeroCOVID approach. However, less than 40% of Hong Kong’s octogenarians have been vaccinated with even a first dose, let alone a booster.
1) As Russian forces continue their invasion and bomb Ukrainian hospitals – a clear war crime – the nation of 44 million people is also facing a renewed threat in the #pandemic, a calculated form of biowarfare, if you will, on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s part.
2) As NBC News reported on Saturday (and as I’ve flagged in two Twitter threads since last week), Ukraine was already facing its largest #COVID spike in cases yet, with a seven-day average of 37,408 on Feb. 10. It has also been struggling with a polio outbreak since last October.
3) And now Ukraine’s very hospitals that are intended to treat #COVID and polio patients (not to mention the victims of Russia's invasion) are being bombed on purpose. Dymytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, condemned this tactic on Thursday as “beyond evil.”
1) In his zeal to start a war and invade Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin has neglected his own people as so-called excess deaths have surged past more than one million during the #COVID crisis. In this thread, I will return to the subject of pandemics and war.
2) “Russia, for instance,” notes Nature magazine, “reported more than 300,000 COVID-19 deaths by the end of 2021, but is likely to have exceeded 1 million excess deaths in that time.” Russia has presumably under-counted #COVID deaths in the lead-up to its invasion of Ukraine.
3) In 2021, Russia experienced its sharpest population decline since the end of the Soviet Union three decades earlier, according to the Moscow Times. Russia had only one short lockdown during spring 2020 and less than half the population has received two vaccine doses.
1) Montréal’s public health director said Wednesday the city was entering a “transition phase” amid falling #COVID hospitalizations. But 10,500 kilometers away, South Korea's prime minister was appealing for calm amid an unprecedented spike in cases. montrealgazette.com/news/local-new…
2) In just four days, the number of declared #COVID infections in South Korea has soared from 100,000 to more than 171,000 – that nation's highest by far than at any other point in the #pandemic. “There is no reason at all to fear or panic,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said.
3) South Korea has now surpassed the United States in its rate of new weekly #COVID hospitalizations, at a rate of 201.81 per million population compared with the U.S rate of 138.18. This is astonishing given South Korea’s Zero COVID approach in dealing with the #pandemic.
1) As COVID hospitalizations trend downward in Québec — dipping by 31 to 1,758 Saturday — everyone is wondering what will happen as the province continues lifting public health protections with the BA.2 sub-variant on the rise. In this thread, I will try to answer that question.
2) First, it’s worth noting the Omicron variant had the hardest impact on hospitalizations in Québec than at any other point in the pandemic. In contrast, although Omicron caused a wave of hospitalizations in South Africa (where it was first detected), past ones there were worse.
3) Omicron has also produced the second highest wave of #COVID deaths in Québec. Again in contrast, although Omicron caused a wave of death in South Africa, previous waves there were higher. So what explains the difference between Québec and South Africa?