Welcome to
Ron’s COVID-19 Page
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
October 11 to 17
This past week’s official data on new COVID infections again reflects the fall trend of moderately-worsening viral spread at levels which remain below those of previous years.
As you can see from this week’s composite chart, Canada-wide municipal wastewater COVID viral counts have continued their reasonably steady rise of recent weeks but the actual numbers are less than 60% of where they were last year at this time.
Here in Ontario, the positivity rate from PCR COVID testing of those who remain eligible for such tests have likewise continued their rising trend but at roughly 50% below last year at this time. Ontario COVID hospitalizations and ICU bed occupancy are running somewhat higher than their summer numbers, but remain quite low in comparison to previous years.
The more independent statisticians at Covid-19 Resources Canada have classified the current risk as Moderate both in Ontario and nationally. Their estimate one in every 189 Ontarians being currently infected and therefore infectious is unchanged over the past several weeks.
Public Health Canada’s latest biweekly report on currently-circulating COVID variants is interesting in that the new PJ.2.1 strain which has been roughly doubling its “market share” every two weeks since early July had, as of mid-September, already become the single most prevalent at 28%. While little is currently known about its characteristics, thankfully it thus far does not appear to cause more severe symptoms than the two existing families (XFG and PQ) which had previously been competing for dominance.