OUR PROVINCIAL
THE PANDEMIC HAS AFFECTED DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE COUNTRY DIFFERENTLY, FROM THE TRAGIC TOLL OF THE FIRST WAVE IN QUEBEC TO THE SHARP RISE IN CASES IN ALBERTA’S FOURTH WAVE.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are being slammed in the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. But if you back up to the start, it was Quebec that was having the worst time. Ontario, too, had called in the military for assistance in long-term-care homes.
A look at the data across the country shows a pandemic that has affected different parts of the country differently.
“The first wave was, really, all the provinces responded pretty much alike, in the same manner — lockdowns and other public health orders, handwashing, and staying home was really big,” said Nazeem Muhajarine, an epidemiologist at the University of Saskatchewan.
Since then, approaches have changed. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has aggressively pursued a reopening strategy at various points in the pandemic. Saskatchewan, too, abruptly dropped pandemic restrictions in summer 2021.
Others have taken a more cautious approach.
“The four Atlantic provinces have had an experience and response to COVID-19 that is so different than the rest of the six provinces,” said Muhajarine. “That is the most stark kind of observation.”
The Atlantic provinces aggressively chased a strategy meant to keep cases from entering the region — and stamping them out when they arrive.
It shows in the numbers. Prince Edward Island has zero deaths. When you look at death rates, which control for population variation across the country, Nova Scotia’s rate is 10 per 100,000 people, New Brunswick’s is nine per 100,000 people and Newfoundland and Labrador’s is two per 100,000 people.
This is orders of magnitude smaller than in Quebec (133 per 100,000) or Ontario (66 per 100,000), Manitoba (88 per 100,000), Saskatchewan (61 per 100,000), Alberta (62 per 100,000) and British Columbia (39 per 100,000).
“B.C., Quebec and Ontario had a lot of deaths because they were linked to long-term-care homes,” said Muhajarine.
Case counts also vary substantially across the country. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec all have a total case rate of more than 4,500 per 100,000; Ontario, B.C. and Manitoba come in at less than 4,500 per 100,000.
In the North, only the Northwest Territories has a case rate above 2,000 per 100,000. In the Atlantic provinces, none are above 700 per 100,000.
These figures disguise some of the other factors at play.
While Quebec might have the highest death rate in the country — roughly double Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario — the numbers change dramatically over time.
Quebec’s death rate in the spring of 2020, when the pandemic first began, peaked at more than 14 deaths per 100,000. No other province has come close to that, except for Manitoba in the second wave, which saw deaths at roughly 13 per 100,000. At that time, Quebec’s death rate was less than 10 per 100,000, as was Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s, whereas B.C. and Ontario hovered around five per 100,000.
In the past two weeks, the death rate in Quebec is just 0.7 per 100,000, while in Alberta, it’s 4.7 per 100,000, and in Saskatchewan it’s 6.4 per 100,000.
In some provinces, deaths were higher in waves one and two than in waves three and four, even if case counts were higher in 2021 than in 2020. That’s likely because of age and vaccinations, said Muhajarine. “Age is a classic confounder when we are comparing deaths and hospitalizations over two time periods, because vaccinations among older people were low in January and high in September,” said Muhajarine.
After a lull in the summer of 2020, cases began to climb last fall, carrying through until Christmas. Another lull, after public-health restrictions had their effect, presaged a third wave in spring 2021. Many provinces saw peaks in their cases and deaths in waves two and three. And now, after a relatively calm summer, there’s a fourth wave hitting parts of the country.
“This fourth wave, I think, Saskatchewan and Alberta, (is) because we lifted restrictions early and completely,” said Muhajarine. “Other provinces began to lift their restrictions as well. B.C., Manitoba to some extent, Ontario, Quebec, but they were more cautious — the lifting of restrictions was spread over a longer period. And it was done slowly, cautiously, incrementally. Alberta and Saskatchewan lifted all of them kind of basically overnight.”
The National Post gathered data on everything from deaths to cases to hospitalizations from each province that either publishes such information online, or that responded to its requests in order to examine the worst times in the pandemic, in each province.
The Post was unable to get complete information for: British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.