Estimated Deaths, Intensive Care Admissions and Hospitalizations Averted in Canada during the COVID-19 Pandemic

These datasets explore disparities in COVID-19 mortality observed in the US and Canada between January 2020 and early March 2021. Table 1 provides counts of deaths, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and cases, by age, for Ontario, Canada (Canada's most populous province).

Table 2 estimates deaths averted by Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, relative to that in the United States, by "Canada-standardizing" the US epidemic (i.e., by applying US age-specific mortality to Canadian populations, in order to estimate the deaths that would have occurred in a Canadian pandemic with the same rates of death as have been observed in the US). Observed Canadian deaths are compared to "expected" deaths with a US-like response in order to estimate both deaths averted and SMR (Table 2).

As Canadian age groups for purposes of death reporting are slightly different from those used in the US (e.g., 0-17 in the US vs. 0-19 in Canada), we reallocate Canadian deaths based on proportions of deaths occurring in 2-year age categories in Ontario (Table 1).

Ontario age-specific case-fatality is used to inflate the deaths averted, in order to estimate cases averted. Ontario age-specific hospitalization and ICU risk (again derived from Table 1) are used to estimate hospitalizations and ICU admissions averted (Table 2).

As of August 9, 2022, a new dataset has been added which applies the methodology described above to compare deaths in Canada to those in the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.  Estimates of QALY loss, and healthcare costs averted, have also been added.  Uncertainty bounds are estimated either as parametric confidence intervals, or as upper and lower bound 95% credible intervals through simulation (implemented using the random draw funding in Microsoft Excel).

Errors in confidence intervals for QALY losses in France and Australia corrected February 28, 2023.