The emergence of COVID-19 variants of concern, the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, and community response to shifting public health measures continue to influence the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and worldwide. Today, in its commitment to keep Canadians informed of the effects of the pandemic, Statistics Canada is releasing a new and updated provisional dataset from the Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database, covering the period from January 1, 2020 to March 5, 2022.
To understand the direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic, it is important to measure excess mortality, which occurs when there are more deaths than expected in a given period. It should be noted that, even without a pandemic, there is always some year-to-year variation in the number of people who die in a given week. This means that the number of expected deaths should fall within a certain range of values. There is evidence of excess mortality when weekly deaths are consistently higher than the expected number, but especially when they exceed the range of what is expected over several consecutive weeks.
The provisional data released today reveal that an estimated 30,146 excess deaths occurred in Canada from March 2020 to the end of December 2021. This amounts to 5.8% more deaths than would be expected if there was no pandemic, after accounting for changes in population, such as aging. Within the same period, 29,230 reported deaths were directly attributed to COVID-19. In addition to deaths directly caused by COVID-19, the pandemic could also have indirect consequences that increase or decrease the occurrences of deaths. Trends in mortality statistics during the pandemic could be affected by various factors, including delayed medical procedures, increased substance use or declines in deaths related to other causes, such as influenza.
Nationally, there have been three significant periods of excess mortality March 2020–June 2020; October 2020–February 2021; and August 2021–November 2021) over the period of observation. However, these trends are merely a summary of what has been happening across the country. Not all regions have experienced the pandemic in a similar fashion and provincial and territorial trends in excess mortality tend to differ from those exhibited by Canada as a whole.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).