Ontario has lost 10,000 lives due to COVID-19. These are some of the stories behind the numbers

In the midst of those heartbreaking meetings, she was able to call the ICU and staff would hold a phone to Nanibush.

“I would call every night to say words, you know, just tell him a story, to play some music for him,” she said in an interview, weeping as she remembered his death.

“I’m 64 years old. I’m not young … I think in some ways I was prepared. But it was too big.”

Nanibush, who was from Wasauksing First Nation near Parry Sound, Ont., Was one of 10,000 people in Ontario who died from COVID-19.

The new gloomy point

Ontario reported three new deaths on Tuesday, bringing the provincial total to a grim historic moment.

Nanibushi was 65 years old. He and Grady fell in love when he did some carpentry work at her candle and bee art store in Toronto, she said. Later they would sell his indigenous crafts in the store.

He chose not to retire from his job at a community center when the pandemic began, Grady said. She urged him to stay home but he would not listen and he contracted the virus either at work or in transit, Grady believes.

Nanibush had asthma and other health problems that made it difficult for him to breathe, but he did not want to go to the hospital after being infected with COVID-19 because of the systematic racism that indigenous people face in the health care system, Grady said.

After spending a week in bed, Nanibush became very ill. “The day he came in, we discussed the ambulance in the morning. He said, ‘No, I don’t want to (go to the hospital),’ and then in the evening, it was clear he had to go. So I called the ambulance,” she said. .

“I do not think I fully recovered from the shock of that day.”

Essential workers at greatest risk

COVID-19 has claimed the lives of Ontarians of all ages and walks of life, but has severely affected elderly residents, with about 5,900 people aged 80 and over dying from the virus, according to Public Health data in Ontario.

The average age of death has decreased during each subsequent wave of the pandemic, provincial data show. From the first wave to the fourth, it dropped from 85 to 74. Long-term care residents are disproportionately affected, with about 40 percent of all provincial deaths occurring in that population.

A report on the latest pandemic forecasts from the Science Advisory Table for COVID-19 in Ontario also notes that people on lower incomes, essential workers, and visible minorities have experienced the highest risk of mortality associated with COVID-19.

Christine Mandegarian was one of the few core workers who fell victim to the virus.

She worked for 31 years in the Altamont Care Community, a long-term care home in eastern Toronto that was among the many pandemic-ravaged nursing homes.

The optimistic and dedicated personal support worker died just one week before her 55th birthday, April 15, 2020.

“I was in shock,” recalls Stephaney Williams, who began working with Mandegarian at home in the 1980s.

“I could not believe we actually lost a colleague for this … It’s a close-knit group, so we all knew her kids, we knew her husband, so really, really hit in home.”

Mandegarian treated her patients and colleagues as her family, Williams said. She often brought home-made Filipino dishes to share and she was adored by staff and patients, Williams said.

Occasionally, Williams wonders what could have gone differently in the long-term care home.

“If they do not give us the right PPE, you want to say, ‘OK, we will not do anything until we get what we need,'” she said, referring to the lack of personal protective equipment that marked the first. waves.

“But there are vulnerable residents who need us, you know what I mean? So you still have to do your job.”

“It’s almost like hearing her voice laughing”

COVID-19 included long-term care homes in the first wave, leaving 1,937 residents dead in those first months, more than 32 percent of all deaths in the province at the time, according to Ontario Public Health data.

Long-term care homes saw roughly the same number of deaths during the second wave, although by then the virus was making its way through other populations and deaths in nursing homes accounted for 21 percent of the second wave total.

Karen Born, assistant scientific director of the Science Advisory Board at COVID-19 in Ontario, said in the third wave, there was more infection among the core workers, people who were unable to stay home.

“The core worker population is a population that is more likely to be from the rationalized populations and from the low-income population,” Born added.

Since the introduction of vaccines, there has been a decline in the number of deaths in general, Born noted. However, those who have not been fully vaccinated are still seeing high rates of infection, hospitalization and death, she said.

At the long-term care home in Altamont, the memory of Mandegarian still lives on. Williams said a room is dedicated to her memory and Mandegarian is often thought of by those who knew her.

“Sometimes you are walking down the hallway and reaching a certain area or entering the staff room is almost like hearing her voice laughing or making you a joke,” she said. “We think a lot about it.”