The Montreal Nursing Homes’ COVID-19 Fatalities. “Increasing” Quebec COVID-19 Death Rate?

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We bring to the attention of our readers this important article by author William Walter Kay. The article raises two fundamental issues:

The first pertains to the deplorable heath care conditions (and the lack of personnel) affecting patients in Quebec’s nursing homes and geriatric wards which inevitably have an incidence on mortality. And that mortality has nothing to do with COVID-19.

The second relates to the outright manipulation of the statistics pertaining to the causes of death in the Province of Quebec. Patients are  either diagnosed by a medical doctor, and/or “tested” for COV-19 with the standard antibody test plus respiratory tract specimen. Neither of these procedures prove unequivocally the incidence of COVID-19. Moreover, in many cases patients are arbitrarily categorized as COV-19 without a test or diagnosis.

Once the patient is categorized as COVID-19 (“presumed”, with or without tests) COVID-19 will be included as “a cause of death” (on the death certificate) irrespective of the actual health condition of the elderly patient who has passed away in the nursing home.

And then this mortality data (based on COVID-19 as a cause of death) will be tabulated and entered into the COVID-19 data banks of the Province of Quebec and Canada. And these data are then transmitted to the WHO, which will then integrate them into the global COVID-19 data bank.

In all probability, the majority of the terminally ill patients in the nursing homes did not die of COVID-19.

These recorded death statistics (arbitrarily assigned to COVID-19) will then be used to sustain the illusion that the coronavirus in Quebec is increasing at an alarming rate, thereby providing a justification to maintaining the lockdown and social distancing.

It’s a big lie. And the medical personnel and Quebec politicians know it. Yet it is not being reported by the media.

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, Qc, May 19, 2020

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Quebec’s 8.5 million residents constitute 22.6% of Canada’s population (37.6 million).

Quebec’s 3,483 COVID-19 deaths constitute 62.5% of the Canadian total (5,595).

Ontario, population 14.6 million, reports 1,858 COVID-19 deaths.

The rest of Canada (pop 14.5 million) reports 345 deaths.

In terms of COVID-19 deaths-per-million citizens: Quebec registers 409; Ontario registers 127; and the rest of Canada: 24.

Four million Quebecers reside in Greater Montreal. Another 2 million reside within a 100-kilometre radius of Montreal. This combined area witnessed 90% of Quebec’s C-19 fatalities partly because this area hosts most of Quebec’s 2,600 long-term care facilities (“nursing homes”). Said facilities are run both by the provincial government as well a private health companies.

Officially, 75% (2,601) of Quebec’s COVID-19 fatalities occurred inside nursing homes. There is clear evidence of under-counting of nursing home fatalities. Nursing home plus geriatric ward fatalities exceed 90% of all fatalities.

Official figures do transpose nicely upon reported ages of COV-19 fatalities. Almost 40% of fatalities were aged 80 to 90. A third were over 90.

Quebec reported its first C-19 death on March 18. Six of Quebec’s first 9 fatalities happened in nursing homes. By March 27 nursing homes were obvious biohazards.

On April 1 officials revealed that 519 nursing homes harboured at least one COVID-19 case.

On April 8 news broke that 115 of 250 residents of a Laval nursing home were COVID-19 positive. Thirteen residents there had perished.

On April 10 ambulance crews discovered residents malnourished, dehydrated and covered with feces at Dorval’s Residence Herron. Crews found corpses Herron’s staff were unaware of. A dispute erupted between provincial health officials and the ambulance service over how many body-bags had been dragged from Herron and over how many of those bags contained COVID-19 fatalities. Herron, which averages 4 deaths per month, had 31 deaths in 14 days. One hundred-fifty residents and staff tested positive.

On April 13 authorities noted a government-run home in Lasalle had 26 COVID-19 fatalities and 351 cases.

At an April 14 presser Quebec’s Director of Public Health stated that he had originally operated on the assumption that asymptomatic C-19 carriers were not contagious. This derriere covering arrived just as news outlets dropped bombs like:

“…as in Italy and Spain, Quebec focussed on freeing up hospital and ICU capacity, and in some cases preventatively transferred seniors out of hospitals into care facilities. At the same time, it established recommendations to those care facilities restricting the transfer of residents back to hospitals should they fall ill. The result has been a humanitarian disaster of still undetermined proportions…”

Health authorities knew intimately where they were sending and confining these patients. Problems at Quebec nursing homes have been studied ad nauseam. Many homes have crowded communal dining rooms and narrow hallways. Many have wards with multiple beds per room and shared toilets. Most have residents incapable of following elementary hygiene protocols meandering about the building. Staff often work at more than one home and continued to do so during the pandemic.

Also amidst the pandemic, nursing home staff earning little more than minimum wage were expected to buy their own personal protective gear. By April’s end thousands of nursing home staff had contracted C-19 or had walked off the job. One home had 2 staff attending to 60 bedridden patients.

On April 30 the government reported 6,603 C-19 cases among nursing home residents.

Quebec’s elderly C-19 sufferers were sent to and/or confined in circumstances approaching the opposite of quarantine. The contagious were not isolated and well-tended. They were herded into cloistered proximity with the most vulnerable, then abandoned.

Quebec has 9,280 C-19 cases aged over 70. Quebec is only treating 1,763 COVID-19 sufferers in hospital (many of whom caught COVID-19 whilst in geriatric wards). Hence, thousands of C-19 patients continue to languish inside bio chambers alongside tens of thousands of elderly neighbors.

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See Also
https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-system-and-services/end-of-life-care/medical-aid-in-dying/

https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/sante/documents/Problemes_de_sante/covid-19/Graphique-deces-milieux-anglais.pdf?1589304907

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-canadas-pandemic-record-is-good-but-we-failed-when-it-came-to/

Many factors behind COVID-19 outbreaks hitting Quebec’s long-term care homes

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-all-2-600-seniors-residences-in-quebec-will-be-inspected-premier-legault-says-1.4893917

https://www.cihi.ca/en/infographic-canadas-seniors-population-outlook-uncharted-territory

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Featured image: The private Herron nursing home in a Montreal suburb lost 31 patients to COVID-19 after their caregivers fled the premises (Photo by Eric THOMAS/AFP)


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