Hundreds more Canadians died in the early weeks of the pandemic than in the same period in previous years — but not all were directly connected to COVID-19, according to new figures released Friday by Statistics Canada.
The report compared weekly deaths from this year against the highest number of deaths for those same weeks over the past five years — looking for "excess deaths" that stood out from historical highs.
Between March 15 and April 25, British Columbia recorded 372 more deaths than in any of the previous five years for those same weeks — but just 99 of those were confirmed COVID-19 cases.
A similar trend was observed in Alberta. For seven weeks, death counts were consistently higher than the historical baseline — but only 40 out of the 402 additional deaths are connected to the coronavirus.
The excess deaths applied to both sexes and appeared to "disproportionately affect those over the age of 85," said the report.
This suggests "other factors might be at play," Owen Phillips, senior analyst with Statistics Canada's vital statistics program, told CBC News. "Possibly variations in population structures or fluctuations in deaths from other causes."
