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
April 12 to 18
The latest official statistics on COVID-19 infections confirm that the expected seasonal drop in new cases is finally underway.
As illustrated in this week’s composite chart, Canada-wide municipal wastewater COVID viral counts have dropped precipitously in recent weeks, having now fallen below the levels of last year at this time. Ontario PCR test positively rates are also declining and are now roughly where they were last April. Ontario COVID hospitalization and ICU bed occupancy rates also reflect that drop, likewise mirroring last year’s figures.
The independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada have not yet published an update to their early-April estimate of one in every 69 Ontarians being currently infected and therefore infectious. I expect that, by next week, their estimate will show a significantly reduction in that risk.
Public Health Canada’s weekly report on the relative “market shares” of currently-circulating COVID variants shows a continuation of the unusual situation in which no one strain is anywhere close to dominance. The single-most prevalent strain, XFG.1.1, accounted for only 14% of all new Canadian infections. That suggests that the 22 different circulating strains which their PCR testing have identified possess unusually little variability in their respective abilities to evade the prevalent human immunity built up from a mix of prior infections and vaccination. There are two main competing COVID variant families. The XFG family included 12 strains accounting for 54% of all new Canadian infections. The 7 strains of its main competitor, the PQ family accounted for just over 31%. That latter family also includes strains with “QF” and “QK” prefixes.