10 January 2021

O/T: Deaths in Ottawa 2019-2020

A new Service Ottawa dataset posted at https://open.ottawa.ca/, the City of Ottawa Marriage Licenses, Death Registrations and Commissioner of Oaths, covers data from 2019 and 2020. With COVID-19 dominating domestic news, it's interesting to see the resulting deaths in perspective. On a month by month basis COVID-19 deaths can be derived from the database COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in Ottawa from Ottawa Public Health.

The total death registrations from Service Ottawa show some outliers, May 2019 reports 899 deaths, September 2020 reports 1,105.

An alternate death reporting system was put in place when Service Ottawa offices were closed for the pandemic. Death registration is required prior to disposal of remains. In these extraordinary circumstances could the September 2020 peak represents a backlog? The May 2019 peak remains an unexplained outlier.

COVID-19 deaths, first reported in March 2020, are a small component of overall deaths. The variations don't appear to correlate with those for COVID-19. And although COVID-19 inflections are way up in the second phase improved treatment means fewer deaths.

No comments: