The later-than-usual seasonal rise in new COVID infections is continuing. Ontario PCR test positivity rates, while still running at only about a third of last year’s numbers, have climbed sharply since early August 2024. As you can see in this week’s composite chart, COVID hospitalizations are also rising, albeit still less sharply, while the ICU admissions rate has barely budged.
Canada-wide, the more independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada have raised their pandemic severity index back to “high”, with Ontario still among the least severe provinces and both Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland are rated at “very high”. Their most recent estimate of one in every 74 Ontarians being currently infected and therefore infectious is considerable higher than the previous one-in-129.
With respect to currently-circulating COVID variants, Public Health Canada’s latest estimate is that the XFG recombinant strain is now utterly dominant, accounting for almost 82% of all new infections. That number includes two of its even more recent offspring: XFG.2 at 5.9% and XFG.3 at 26.5%. Neither of the latter two subvariants appear to be as successful as the original XFG, which continues to increase its percentage while they remain mostly stagnant.