University of Toronto infectious disease researcher is standing by her peer-reviewed Royal Society of Canada study, which found Canada is undercounting COVID-19 deaths, a day after Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe called part of it “misinformation.”“It was just kind of silly and uninformed,” Dr.
Tara Moriarty said in an interview.The report found that Canada is missing “at least two thirds of the deaths caused by COVID-19 in communities outside of the long-term care sector,” presenting a dramatically different understanding of how the disease affected the country.
Are all fatalities counted as Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 death toll climbs? It compared the reported at-home and in-hospital deaths, combined with testing rates and positivity, from different provinces and territories, to those in Quebec, which tests all deceased people for COVID.
It also compared national statistics to similar countries.Saskatchewan, at the end of the time of data collection, was likely undercounting deaths by a factor of seven, Moriarty said.Moe took issue with the findings when asked about excess deaths in a press conference on Monday (when speaking about how the province was reporting deaths and why it failed to report nine recent deaths).