Nova Scotia tight-lipped about spike in deaths

Combing through Nova Scotia's death data, infectious diseases researcher Tara Moriarty offers up a simple but chilling conclusion about what's happening in the province.

"Unexpectedly high numbers of people are dying in an untimely fashion before they would normally," said Moriarty, who is an associate professor at the University of Toronto.

Statistics Canada tracks excess mortality, which is the actual number of deaths above what is expected.

For the first 10 months of 2022, there were 848 more deaths than expected in Nova Scotia. The province said 546 of those were due to COVID-19. That means almost 36 per cent of the deaths are attributable to other causes.

But it's unclear what those other causes are. The province declined interview requests with Health Department officials and the chief medical examiner.

Statistics Canada's excess mortality tracker was recently updated with data from Nova Scotia covering September and October 2022.

During those two months, it said there were 304 more deaths than expected. Health Department spokesperson Khalehla Perrault said there were 97 COVID-19 deaths during that time — up from 41 in the province's September and October epidemiology reports.

"There is sometimes a lag in reporting a COVID-19 death as it does not always appear immediately in the data system due to reviews and investigations, as appropriate," Perrault wrote in an email.

In Nova Scotia, deaths attributed to COVID-19 capture both cases in which coronavirus infection was the main cause and those in which it was believed to be a contributing factor. In cases where the cause of death is unknown or a person is suspected to have had COVID-19, tests are carried out to find evidence of the disease.

Statistics Canada tracks excess mortality in weekly blocks. The last time the estimate was negative for Nova Scotia was on May 21, 2022.

Moriarty is the lead for the COVID-19 Resources Canada project, which does modelling to help members of the public better understand the COVID-19 situation. It receives funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada for its work.

Moriarty is calling on the province to explain what is behind the persistent, positive excess mortality numbers. She worries that without an explanation, purveyors of COVID-19 misinformation will argue that COVID-19 vaccines are to blame.

While Moriarty says deaths from COVID-19 are likely the biggest cause of excess mortality, there could be other reasons, such as toxic drugs. Based on preliminary data, the province believes there were 63 deaths in 2022 from opioid overdoses. That number is not unusually high — there were a higher number of opioid toxicity deaths in Nova Scotia in 2012, 2014 and 2017. 

Kim McGrail, a professor at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, said it's important to pinpoint the causes of excess mortality because it "gives you a much, much better way to understand where you might intervene, what might need to change to correct what's going on."