COVID-19 in B.C.: 4,200 fewer surgeries performed per month during the pandemic, report reveals

Registered nurse Liana Perruzza attends to a patient in a COVID positive room in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at St. Paul's hospital in downtown Vancouver, Tuesday, April 21, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS / Jonathan Hayward)

A new report highlighting the ripple effects COVID-19 has had on Canada's health-care system suggests thousands of fewer surgeries were performed per month than before the pandemic.

The report, released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, says between March 2020 and June 2021, B.C. performed about 4,200 fewer surgeries per month compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

April 2020 was the hardest in terms of surgery decline, which saw about a 69 per cent decrease compared to the previous year. That fell in the middle of B.C.'s temporary pause on many non-urgent elective surgeries, which began on March 16 and lasted until May.

Surgery impacts during that time, according to the report, include 27 per cent fewer cardiac surgeries, 13 per cent fewer cancer surgeries and 86 per cent fewer high-volume surgeries like hip and knee replacements.

"Our data shows that lessons learned from the first wave of COVID-19 resulted in fewer cancelled surgeries in the following two waves," said Kathleen Morris, vice-president of research and analysis for CIHI, in a news release.

"There are still many unknowns about the effects of COVID-19 on our health systems and on the health of our population — such as what happened to those who didn’t seek hospital care or to those whose surgeries or diagnostic tests were delayed."

Nationwide, surgeries decreased by about 35,000 per month on average. In total, Canadian hospitals have completed about 560,000 fewer surgeries since the start of the pandemic compared to previous years. 

Another report, released last week by the Canadian Medical Association, revealed just how devastating these types of health-care impacts might have been. According to that report, health-care delays and missed treatments during the pandemic may have contributed to more than 4,000 excess deaths across the country. 

That report also conducted an estimate of the accumulated backlog for eight different surgical and medical procedures from April 2020 to June 2021. It revealed the number of time lost to perform these procedures ranged from 46 days for breast cancer surgery, to 64 days for a CT scan, and up to 118 days for a hip replacement.

Last week, the federal government said there remains an estimated 780,000 delayed surgeries across Canada.