I'll make my comments in English, but I can answer your questions in French or English.
At our organization, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, there is a lot that echoes what other witnesses have said. In my testimony, I am going to highlight for you the impacts of COVID-19 on those with heart disease and stroke, and their caregivers, and how we have been responding and supporting them through this time. I will also address the financial toll the pandemic has brought on us within this sector and, to echo some other comments, specifically the issues regarding health research, at a time when science and research are incredibly important.
I will first focus on COVID and the intersection in our understanding. We know that it has worse impacts on people with underlying conditions, such as heart disease and stroke. We know that people with heart conditions are four times more likely to die if they have the virus than those with no underlying conditions, and those with previous strokes are three times more likely to die. As some of the other witnesses spoke about, we know that it has devastating respiratory impacts, but underlying and emerging evidence is showing that it actually has a significant involvement with the cardiovascular system and serious consequences like clotting, stroke, cardiac arrest and heart attack.
Right now, as others have talked about, people with heart conditions and risk factors are very much adhering to the physical distancing and self-isolation precautions, but what is really happening—and it is a very worrisome, unintended consequence of the pandemic—is that people experiencing signs and symptoms are not seeking medical attention for fear of coming into contact with the virus, or are justifiably worried about overwhelming our health system.
We at Heart and Stroke have just done a piece of data analysis with the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. We found that in Ontario there's been a 30% reduction in ER visits over the period of March and early April for STEMIs, which are the most serious type of heart attack, and a similar reduction for stroke-related visits. At Vancouver Coastal Health, they're seeing a 40% reduction in STEMIs.
We're very quickly mobilizing to continue to draw attention not only to COVID but also to the importance of really treating medical emergencies as such and seeking care. I also very much echo what some of my colleague witnesses have spoken about. People with heart disease and stroke are managing complex, chronic conditions with a lot of medications and rehabilitation, and a lot of them now are not getting the kind of support and care that they need, in addition to things like delayed surgeries and delayed treatments.
In fact, for us at Heart and Stroke, the number of people seeking guidance and support has been a bit overwhelming. In the last two months, we've had one million people coming to our website and nearly 100,000 accessing our COVID-specific resources, webinars, supports, online—