Western Standard - October 14, 2021


Hinshaw apologizes to family of 14-year-old boy for claiming he died of COVID


Episode Stats

Length

2 minutes

Words per Minute

129.62546

Word Count

383

Sentence Count

28


Summary

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Dina Hinshawkins has apologized to the family of a boy who died of cancer after claiming initially it was a COVID that killed him. On Tuesday, Simone Spitzer took to social media to call out Alberta Health for labeling her younger brother Nathaniel's death as COVID-related. Nathaniel was, in fact, already dying of stage 4 brain cancer and in palliative care but tested positive for CODI-19 days before his expected death.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, I'm Dave Naylor, the news editor of the Western Standard with some breaking Thursday
00:00:13.120 afternoon news. Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Dina Hinshaw has apologized to the family of a
00:00:19.760 boy who died of cancer after claiming initially it was a COVID that killed him. On Tuesday,
00:00:25.440 Simone Spitzer took to Facebook to call out Alberta Health for labeling her younger brother Nathaniel's
00:00:31.360 death COVID-related. Nathaniel was, in fact, already dying of stage 4 brain cancer and palliative care
00:00:39.200 but tested positive for COVID-19 days before his expected death. The Spitzer family was not
00:00:45.680 only devastated by their loss but said they were shocked Nathaniel's death was used to add to
00:00:51.520 Alberta Health's COVID-19 numbers as the youngest COVID-19 death to date. They called it fake news
00:00:58.960 in a Tuesday Facebook post. NDP leader Rachel Notley and her MLAs had used the death to attack
00:01:06.000 the UCP's handling of the pandemic. In a Thursday press conference, Hinshaw apologized to the family.
00:01:13.040 Hinshaw said she was sorry if her comments added to the Spitzer family's grief.
00:01:17.040 She said in their normal reporting to Alberta Health, they include deaths where COVID-19 is a
00:01:23.760 primary or secondary cause of death. A primary cause would be where COVID-19 leads to pneumonia
00:01:30.800 and the eventual death of the patient. A secondary cause would be where COVID-19 makes a heart failure
00:01:37.520 pre-existing condition even worse. Hinshaw said, quote,
00:01:42.640 At different times we need to adjust the numbers. Being transparent and timely means we will need to
00:01:48.720 make adjustments. Hinshaw noted the death of anybody under 18 will bring, quote,
00:01:54.560 higher scrutiny and she's promised to review all deaths under 18 before saying they were whether or
00:02:01.040 not they were COVID-related. None of the mainstream media has covered the Spitzer family's story until
00:02:07.760 Hinshaw apologized. We've it chronicled exclusively in the Western Standard. Also on Thursday, Hinshaw
00:02:15.280 reported 30 new COVID deaths in Alberta in the last 24 hours. That makes 68 people who have died
00:02:23.040 in the last two days. There were 916 new COVID-19 cases out of 12,700 tests. That's a positivity rate of
00:02:32.960 7.5 percent. There's 1,016 people in hospital. A decrease of 11 patients. 231 of those are in the ICU.
00:02:42.960 That's a decrease of five. For the Western Standard, I'm Dave Naylor.