Q. “I ask myself the following question: who is now dying from COVID-19? I look for the answer in the newspapers and on the Internet, I can not find anything… ”
Sylvie Larocque
R. Mme Larocque,
First, the good news: we are dying much less from COVID-19 in Quebec today than a year ago. On average, two or three deaths are reported per day in the province, compared to about thirty daily at the same time last year. The main reason for the difference is vaccination.
If you look at the death data, you’ll notice one intriguing thing, and one that hasn’t changed since the start of the pandemic: more men die from the disease than women. Researchers believe this could be due to the protective effect of estrogen, a female sex hormone.
It is all the more surprising that at the start of the pandemic, more women than men contract the disease. This is undoubtedly explained by the fact that more of them occupy risky occupations such as orderlies, nurses, daycare educators or teachers. However, this difference has diminished considerably. For the third and fourth waves (the ongoing one that started last summer), COVID-19 cases are almost evenly distributed between males and females.
For the current wave, the mortality rate for men is thus 4 deaths per 100,000 people, against 2 deaths per 100,000 people for women. This is light years from the first wave, where the rates were 68 and 55 per 100,000, respectively, for men and women.
Not surprisingly, older people continue to be overrepresented in deaths. The 70 and over represent 72% of the deaths recorded during the fourth wave. At the other end of the spectrum, 8 people in their 30s have succumbed to the disease since July 18 (out of 306 deaths in all, as of December 2).
The vaccination status of those who die from COVID-19? It is not being disclosed because with the low death toll, it could lead to a breach of confidentiality. The Ministry of Health gives us the example of November 22, where only one death attributable to COVID-19 was recorded. If we know this person, we automatically know their immunization status if information about it comes to light. However, this is confidential information.
However, we know that despite the fact that 89% of adults are vaccinated in Quebec, the unvaccinated continue to be more likely to be hospitalized than the vaccinated (237 hospitalizations against 184 in the last 28 days). We can therefore assume that they are also more likely to die from COVID-19.
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