2 years into the pandemic, Manitoba suffers Canada's 2nd-highest COVID-19 death rate
CBC
Gordon Dreilich loved to hunt and fish. He followed the Jets and Bombers. He played hockey when he was young, volunteered as a coach and worked as a professional carpenter.
The Winnipegger had liver and kidney disease before he contracted COVID-19 in late 2020. He ended up in hospital and lived weeks in intensive care but, according to his sister, never quite recovered.
Dreilich's long-term effects included panic attacks and being unable to catch his breath. Four months after he got out of the hospital, he went back for a liver transplant and didn't survive.
He died in June at age 63.
"He went right to the hospital, and that was it, we never saw him," said his sister, Charlene Fewings.
She considers her brother a victim of COVID-19 even though she remains unsure whether his death is included in Manitoba's official tally of fatalities attributed to the disease.
"I'm not ready to see the reports of what took place. It's still very fresh," she said.
"It affects everybody differently, and I think that's the big thing. You don't know how severe it's going to be for you. And just one person's death that could be preventable … is too many."
Two years ago as of Friday, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since then, no fewer than 1,708 Manitobans have died from the disease, according to the official provincial count.
That includes 667 in 2020 alone. Only cancer and heart disease caused more deaths in Manitoba that year, according to Manitoba Vital Statistics.
The province reported another 725 COVID deaths in 2021 as well as 316 this year so far, as of Thursday.
In purely numerical terms, the death of 1,708 people over two years is comparable to the disappearance of the entire population of Roblin, Man.
In relative terms, the COVID death rate in this province is even more significant.
Two years into the pandemic, Manitoba continues to have the second-highest COVID-19 death rate in Canada: 123 COVID deaths for every 100,000 people, according to federal data.
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