"Montreal is fragile, the rest of Quebec is paradise", said Thursday May 7, Doctor Horacio Arruda, national director of public health, to justify the new postponement of the date of deconfinement of the Canadian metropolis, now hoped for May 25. Of the 121 deaths reported that day in the province, 119 had occurred in Montreal. A very atypical situation compared to the whole of Canada: the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, in addition a member for a constituency of the city, declared himself Saturday May 9 "Very concerned for the citizens of Montreal".
The city is today among the worst in North America, with 806 deaths per million inhabitants for its agglomeration, according to the count made daily by the Observatory of the Metropolitan Community of Montreal; only New York City would break this sad record (2,346 deaths per million people, according to Johns Hopkins University). Montreal alone records nearly half of Quebec deaths (1,727 of the 2,786 deaths in the province, as of May 9).
How to explain what the English Canadian daily newspaper Globe and Mail qualified "Tragic anomaly" speaking of the Montreal situation? "Montreal concentrates more population, more density, more poverty, so it inevitably knows more cases", tried to argue Horacio Arruda. Identical factors in other major Canadian cities like Vancouver or Toronto have not, however, led to the same consequences.
Loss of control from March 23
Despite voluntary confinement demanded from Quebecers in mid-March and an economy put on "pause" from the 23, the public and health authorities of Quebec have in reality lost control of the situation on two fronts in the metropolis.
From the first days of April, the lack of nursing staff and poor sanitary management caused a massacre in residences for the elderly: the number of victims in these reception centers today represents 80% of deaths in the city . The Premier of Quebec, François Legault (center right), has multiplied the announcements to bring them reinforcement; but the calls to retired nurses or medical students and the promise of bonuses for caregivers as well as for all those who would come from other regions of Quebec to help out in Montreal were not enough to fill the shortage.
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