Alberta’s new Respiratory Virus Dashboard provides weekly updates on the spread of COVID-19 in the province, but understanding the numbers can be challenging, and it’s especially tricky to know how many other people have died.
For example, Albertans who viewed the panel in mid-November were greeted with a series of “highlights” on the page informing them that there had been two COVID-19 deaths in the final week of the report.
This is technically true.
Equally true, although less obvious, was the fact that there were 18 more deaths in this week’s report, compared to last week’s report.
How can the numbers be correct?
This is what is happening.
Of the 18 additional deaths included in this week’s report, only two occurred in the week of Nov. 5-11.
This is fairly typical, given the time it takes to record and include COVID deaths in provincial data. The procedure can take weeks, and rarely more than a month.
This delay in reporting means that in recent weeks there have been an enormous number of deaths indexed in each weekly report.
However, nowhere does it indicate that a further 18 people had died in total, adding to those from the previous weeks.
To perceive this, a guest would need to recall the total number of deaths cited in last week’s report and then subtract it from the total number of deaths in the recent peak report.
The province’s decision to provide knowledge on the issue can create a misleading picture, says Craig Jenne, a professor of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary.
“We’re seeing this number turn out to be small and that maybe leads to a false sense of security,” he said.
“We saw almost no change in the emerging numbers over the next few weeks. “
By way of illustration, the animated graph below shows how the total number of weekly deaths increases retroactively in the next reports from September to November.
To give Albertans a better understanding of the numbers, CBC News developed an automated formula to pull data from the provincial dashboard and provide the data in another way.
You can do this in the series of graphs and tables below.
First, another edition of the highlights: one that reflects all the new deaths reported from one week to the next, as well as other serious consequences.
The table below summarizes the number of additional deaths and hospital admissions (excluding ICU and ICU) in the province’s recent peak weekly report, compared to last week’s report.
The table below provides more main points about when the deaths occurred.
Each column in the table below represents the number of COVID-19 deaths in a given week of the existing respiratory virus season.
However, the delay in reporting must be taken into account: recent weeks constitute an underestimation of the real number of deaths.
The figures will be revised upwards as more deaths are reported in a given week in the future.
Similarly, the graph below shows when other people were hospitalized.
Each bar shows the number of people admitted to the hospital in a given week. Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions are shown in red and non-ICU admissions are shown in yellow.
Only Americans who have a laboratory-confirmed case of COVID-19 and have been admitted to the hospital due to COVID-19 are included in this public data.
Alberta Health Services also tracks the total number of COVID-positive patients hospitalized, adding those who were admitted for other reasons, but does not make it public. CBC News has received such internal reports in the afterlife and the numbers are higher than the public data.
Since the data is publicly available, there may also be a reporting delay of a week or more.
“Data on hospital and ICU admissions would likely have delays in reporting,” Alberta Health explains in its briefing notes. “Last week’s data is likely incomplete and should be interpreted with caution, as updates may occur in the coming weeks as the bureaucracy of case reports slows down through AHS. “
The following knowledge visualization breaks down important outcomes across age.
For each organization by age in the table below, you’ll find the total number of hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths during the current respiratory virus season.
It will also locate the population-adjusted rate (per 100,000 people) by age group.
Jenne, who studies infectious diseases, says it’s “frustrating” how long it’s now taking for knowledge about COVID-19 to become public.
“When those numbers are kept up-to-date in real time and instead reviewed over weeks or months, it doesn’t provide the public with the data they want to make decisions with as much information as possible,” Jenne said.
Alberta Health has shown that reporting delays mean that some deaths are retroactively added to knowledge, but are included in the first page highlights, which only count deaths known to have occurred in the most recent reporting week.
He noted that the full number of deaths can be viewed by clicking on the “Severe Outcomes” tab on the dashboard and then scrolling to the seventh knowledge visualization on that page, titled “Number of Weekly Hospital Admissions (in Intensive Care and Out of ICU). ) and death due to COVID-19. “
CBC News also asked if the provincial government considered this to be an effective way to report the number of deaths. Charlotte Taillon, press secretary to the Minister of Health, gave a reaction that did not directly answer this question.
“In October, we introduced a new respiratory virus dashboard to further align reporting with other respiratory viruses such as influenza,” he wrote in an email. “This updated dashboard harmonizes respiratory virus data reporting, aligning with practices followed by other provinces.
CBC News will update the charts on this page weekly when Alberta Health releases new insights. We’ll also paint and complete the knowledge visualizations on this page. If you have any questions, suggestions, or requests, please contact: robson. fletcher@cbc. California
Data Journalist / Senior Reporter
Robson Fletcher’s paintings for CBC Calgary focus on data, analysis, and investigative journalism. He joined CBC in 2015 after spending the last decade as a journalist and editor at newspapers in Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba.
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