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New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has found that hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections are still in the thousands, while vaccine rates drop.
Nearly 60,000 people were hospitalized in what the CIHI calls “vaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations” across Canada in 2024.
Influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) accounted for more than half of hospitalizations, while COVID-19 contributed to more than 40 per cent.
This number of hospitalizations is “significantly more for our hospitals to handle,” Melanie Josée Davidson, director for the health system performance team at CIHI, said.
“What we’re seeing is it’s not as high as it was during the pandemic, but about 40 per cent of the hospitalizations in the last year were still due to COVID-19. So clearly that’s not something we had to deal with before the pandemic and now we have to deal with that on an ongoing basis,” she said.
The data shows 142 hospitalizations for every 100,000 Canadians in 2024, an increase from 66 per 100,000 in 2019.
An average hospitalization for COVID-19 is “about 23 days,” Davidson says, which results in “about $28,500 per hospitalization because it’s such a lengthy length of stay.”
Yet, she said that across the country, “our hospitals are full and some of them are operating at over capacity frequently.”
Fahad Razak, an internal medicine physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, said that “one of the toughest parts of the job” is seeing the number of people being admitted for these illnesses, calling capacity issues in hospitals a “red flag.”
“Increasing the very things that make hospitals work better, staff and number of beds, they’re not instant fixes. Building hospitals, it would take 10 years from a funding announcement to having a fully functional hospital,” he said. “So, we Canadians collectively, we have to make the system work.”
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The influx of hospitalizations due to respiratory illnesses makes it harder to treat other patients who enter the health-care system for unrelated issues.
“Everything happens in that one place. So, when you have a big wave of patients coming in every respiratory virus season, plus with COVID, it can be really almost any time of year, this is an unneeded additional pressure,” Razak said.
Government of Canada numbers report that 26 per cent of Canadian adults were vaccinated against COVID-19 in the fall of 2024. Seniors aged 65 years and older had the highest coverage at 54 per cent.
For seasonal influenza, just 33 per cent of adults in Canada were vaccinated during the 2024–2025 season.
The CIHI report also found that adults aged 75 years and older made up almost half (46 per cent) of all hospitalizations for “vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases” in 2024, something that Davidson states “has a very big impact on their health and their recuperation capacity.”
“This is why we really encourage health-care providers and people caring for older people in long-term care to get their vaccines, because it’s not just about the individual getting vaccinated. It’s about them being protected by everyone around them,” Crowcroft said.
Razak added that many patients express regret in not being immunized sooner.
“I think many patients will say at the end of a process like this, they’re in hospital for a week, of course some people die, but for those who then leave hospital, they’ll say, ‘I’m going to get my vaccine next year,’” he said.
“It’s like a seatbelt. It’s an insurance policy. Getting your vaccine every year in the cycle just means there’s one less thing you have to worry about, and I’d love for more Canadians to think about it that way.”
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