Welcome to
Ron’s COVID-19 Page
What’s new on this site
The COVID municipal wastewater PCR testing results for each province, which are updated weekly on our Canada page, have all been revised to accommodate a restructuring of the Canada Public Health Infobase from which we draw the data.
Who We Are
This site shares the results of an ongoing personal project to better understand why the pandemic developed in such a damaging way in Canada, what other jurisdictions have done to better protect their citizens from those impacts and what we can collectively do to reduce the possible carnage from futures wave caused by this rapidly-evolving virus. It neither represents nor receives funding from any other person or organization. The sole purpose is to provide the latest and most meaningful data and insights related to the pandemic and its impact on our society in a readily accessible format. You will find many meaningful charts and analyses which provide context for the statistics summarized in the above table by clicking on the Global, Canada, Ontario and Kingston menus. For more details, see the About page.
Weekly Pandemic Update
August 17 to 23
While the overall Canadian trend remains the beginning of the expected seasonal rise in new COVID infections as identified by municipal wastewater testing, it’s something of a jagged curve, with the most recent number being down from the previous week. As you can see from this composite chart, Ontario PCR test results show a steeper, more definitive rise, albeit at roughly half the level of last year at this time. As expected, Ontario COVID hospitalizations have only just begun to reflect the higher infection rate and ICU admissions have yet to follow suit.
The good news is that the independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada have resumed publishing after a month-long absence. I have long found their estimates of the proportion of our population currently infected by COVID (and therefore infectious) to be the most useful statistic upon which to base rational decisions as to whether or not I should take precautions like wearing an N95 mask when going to the supermarket or other crowded indoor spaces. Their estimate for Ontario is one in every 129 people being currently infected.
The most recent Public Health Canada report on currently-circulating COVID variants shows that the new recombinant XFG variant has continued to become ever more dominant. Unusually, XFG and its subsequent XFG.3 progeny appear to be almost equally infectious, together accounting for 70% of all new Canadian infections. The continuing moderate level of hospitalizations strongly suggests that the symptoms which they cause in their victims are no more severe than their immediate predecessors and that current booster shots continue to provide good protection.