The official COVID-related statistics released this past week confirm that the seasonal rise in new COVID infections is continuing as a now well-established trend.
As explained in last week’s blog, the Canada-wide COVID wastewater test results included in our composite chart likely underestimates the rate of increase in new infections, in part because the Ontario numbers reported to Public Health Canada are now so pathetically (not to mention deliberately) unrepresentative. The more reliable PCR test positivity graph illustrates the steady rate of increase, which has tripled since April and is already more than double last year at this time. COVID hospitalizations are likewise more than twice those of last year at this time and ICU occupancy is now following suit.
The last monthly estimate by COVID-19 Resources Canada statisticians of the number of Ontarians currently infected, one in 74, will hopefully be updated next week and, judging from the above data, will probably have worsened.
The latest US data from the Centers for Disease control on the relative “market shares” of currently-circulating Omicron variants is dominated by the KP-prefixed family of JN.1-derived strains. Specifically, KP.3.1.1 now accounts for more than 42% of all new US COVID infections, and is the only one of the top nine whose share continues to increase. Virtually all new cases are JN.1-derived. On August 22, the US Food and Drug Administration approved by Pfizer and Moderna versions of their respective mRNA vaccines formulated against the KP.2 genome. Hopefully Canadian approval will be forthcoming in time for the Fall booster season.