More COVID-19 patients dying at home, Ontario coroner says

COVID-19 news 😷🗞 At least 25 Ontarians have died of COVID-19 without seeking medical attention in recent weeks

Some COVID-19 patients are now becoming so ill so quickly that they die before seeking medical attention, Ontario's chief coroner said.

At least 25 people have died in their homes rather than in hospitals or nursing homes since April 1, Dr. Dirk Huyer told CBC News on Friday. There could be more cases that his office is unaware of, he added.

The new reality is a deviation from earlier waves of the pandemic, when most COVID-19 deaths took place in nursing homes and hospitals. It indicates how dangerous the current caseload is in Ontario, Huyer said.

He said he was particularly troubled that some of the people who have died at home were in their 30s, 40s and 50s.

"That is not what we saw in the earlier waves. It was not common for younger people to die. So absolutely, it is concerning."

Huyer first mentioned the "unfortunate and sad" phenomenon at a news conference at Ontario's legislature building on Thursday.

"It's not that people were ignoring symptoms.... These are people who did have a stable condition and then deteriorated very quickly to their unfortunate deaths," he told reporters.

It's too early to say whether this is happening because of new variants of the virus that are more transmittable and can cause more severe illness, Huyer told CBC News.

He said he shared the information, "so that people understand the seriousness of what we're dealing with." • 📸: Picture JESHOOTS.COM / Unsplash.com