Alberta Reports 'Unprecedented Increase in Ill-Defined and Unknown Causes of Death in 2021'

Alberta is reporting an unprecedented increase in ill-defined and unknown causes of death in 2021. https://t.co/nqRIhGLfZk

— CTV News Calgary (@CTVCalgary) July 5, 2022

Alberta is reporting an unprecedented increase in ill-defined and unknown causes of death in 2021.

That category is leading the way over dementia, which has been in the top spot since 2016, and COVID-19, which began adding to the death tally in the province in a big way in 2020.

In 2021, ill-defined and unknown causes of death snagged the first spot with 3,362, up from 1,464 in 2020 and 522 the year before that, according to statistics from the Government of Alberta.

The unknown causes of death category only began appearing on the list in 2019 — there is no record of it ranking before then, dating back to 2001.

"I think it's probably multifactorial, so there's probably many things playing into that," said Dr. Daniel Gregson, an associate professor in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, specializing in infectious diseases and microbiology.

Gregson believes those factors include lack of resources to determine the cause of death in certain cases, delayed access to healthcare services and post-COVID complications.

"We have this impression of surviving COVID and that's the end of it, and that's not necessarily true," he told CTV News.

Gregson points to a large study out of the U.S. that found people who had COVID-19 are at a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, pulmonary embolisms and death compared to those who haven't been infected. The risk is even higher for those who end up in hospital or the ICU with COVID.

"We do expect that there will be deaths that aren't directly related to COVID, but indirectly related to COVID to occur after the diagnosis in patients after the first month of infection," he said.

"One would expect that some of those patients are going to survive the COVID and then die at home from other complications."