Epidemiologist calls COVID-19 death of Winnipeg girl under 10 ‘tragic’ but ‘rare’

WINNIPEG (CityNews) — An epidemiologist says the death of a child under the age of 10 years old in Manitoba due to COVID-19 is an extremely rare occurrence, but still serves as a tragic reminder that the virus is still present in our lives.

Epidemiologist Cynthia Carr says the Winnipeg girl’s death, which Manitoba health officials reported in the province’s daily COVID bulletin Sunday, was the 13th death in Canada of a person aged 19 and under.

That puts the fatality rate for that age group at 0.05 per cent in Canada.

“It’s so rare in fact that even Health Canada in their weekly surveillance reports — when they report deaths for example by age group — the age group cluster is actually under 19. They don’t even report weekly the numbers of deaths under the age of 10 because it’s so rare.

“So one death for this little girl here in from the Winnipeg region is certainly absolutely tragic, but also very rare. And unfortunately, very rare events do happen.

“It’s a tragic situation and reminds us that this virus is dangerous. It’s killed over 26,000 Canadians, it’s killed over 1,100 Manitobans and made other many many thousands more very very sick in hospital, and many more taking a long time to recover from this virus.”

Sunday’s provincial health update did not provide more information or the child’s exact age. It is not known either if the girl had any underlying conditions.

It also was not revealed if the child’s death was linked to a variant of concern or the original coronavirus strain.

“What has changed with these variants of concern is their enhanced ability to transmit,” said Carr. “They’re getting better and better at latching onto our cells and getting in, getting more efficient at creating more and more copies once they’re in, and then some are getting even better at starting to be able to evade our immune response.”

Manitoba’s COVID-19 death toll since the start of the pandemic is 1,139.

The province also identified 97 new cases of the coronavirus, but removed one due to a data error. Most of those (50) came from the Winnipeg region. The positivity rate is 6.5 per cent.

There are currently 94 Manitobans hospitalized due to the virus, including 64 in intensive care.

“In Manitoba there’s still about 14,180 cases that are active, that’s a lot of people with active virus,” said Carr. “And you know, even if we’re over 70 per cent of the population aged 12 and over that are vaccinated with their first shot, that’s still a lot of targets that are available for those circulating cases.”

–With files from Marie Gomez