The most recent week’s worth of official COVID-related data again shows relatively little change from the previous week.
This week’s composite chart suggests that Ontario’s PCR COVID test positivity rate continued its expected decline from the holiday-season peak, though the magnitude of that change could potentially represent a data problem which we can only wait until next week to confirm. New COVID-related hospitalizations continue to decline nicely but ICU occupancy has yet to follow suit. The Canadian COVID-19 has not been updated in the past week, which means that we lack a more independent source with which to compare the government numbers.
Turning to currently-circulating COVID variants, the latest Public Health Canada estimates again show unusually little change in recent weeks. The Canadian “market share” of the still-dominant recombinant XEC strain has slightly declined to 34% of all new COVID infections. The second most common is also in decline, down to 12%. The fastest-rising variant is LP8.1.1 at 11%, which represents a 240% rise over the past six weeks.