TORONTO –The number of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario is considerably higher than the number reported every day by the province, the Ministry of Health confirmed to CTV News Toronto, due to a discrepancy in data for nursing homes. long duration.

A ministry spokesman confirmed on Friday that the province’s integrated public health information system (iPHIS) had killed 110 people in Ontario. While the system has reported that 763 lives have been lost due to the virus, the real number is 873.

The government says the gap comes from two separate data sets – the SISPP and the Ministry of Long-Term Care – which often operate on entirely different timelines.

While SISPI data depends on local public health units to capture the information, the Ministry of Long-Term Care relies on its “immediate relationships with homes” to determine how many residents have been infected with COVID-19 and how many died.

The result is two very different figures – from the number of residents and staff who contracted the virus to the number of people who died as a result.

Travis Kann, director of communications to Health Minister Christine Elliott, explains that if the government uses the figures provided by iISP to plan its COVID-19 response, the data is used “it being understood that is an under-representation of the number of deaths. “

“We were clear from the start that there was a lag with the SISPP as we wait for local public health units to enter the data,” Kann told CTV News Toronto.

Kann says that to have an “immediate understanding” of the actual number of deaths, the “reasonable thing to do” would be to calculate the difference in deaths between the SISPP and the Ministry of Long-Term Care and add it to the province. large figure reported by iPHIS.

For example, on Friday, the ministry reported that a total of 573 long-term care residents died after contracting COVID-19, while iPHIS reported 463 deaths in the same period.

The difference of 110, according to the government, should then be added to the total number of deaths reported by the ISPH to determine the true figure, bringing the current number of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario to 873.

The province’s reporting system was subject to intense scrutiny and criticism during the COVID-19 crisis due to inconsistent information.

CTV News Toronto reported the spread earlier this month after noting that the number of deaths confirmed by local public health units was almost double what Ontario was reporting at one time.

Multiple discrepancies have resulted in multiple changes to the way the province reports virus data, which has led to the inclusion of 12 footnotes explaining why the information may be incomplete.

However, the government still expresses confidence in the system.

“We are confident that iPHIS provides a good overview of what’s going on in the community,” said Kann. “We are also in a place where the vast majority of new cases and deaths come from long-term care homes.”