While the most recent week’s worth of COVID statistics will undoubtedly be somewhat revised upwards due to late-arriving data, it is becoming fairly clear that the current seasonal surge of new COVID infections is levelling off and that its peak will be moderately lower that that of last year.
The above observations are reflected in this week’s composite chart. Ignoring the likely spurious, most-recent-week dip in the official PCR testing positivity rate, the seasonal surge petered out in mid-September and the graph has been essentially flat for more than a month. COVID hospital admissions and ICU bed occupancy have likely fluctuated within a comparatively narrow range during that same period. The pandemic severity index developed and monitored by the independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada show an actual decline for both Canada as a whole and Ontario. That said, their estimate of the number of Ontarians currently infected and hence infectious remains uncomfortably high, at one in every 28 people.
The latest Public Health Canada report on COVID variants shows that the currently-dominant KP3.1.1 strain continues to rapidly lose Canadian “market share” to the yellow-shaded recombinant XEC strain. As of November 9, KP3.1.1 had fallen from its end-September peak (57% of all new cases) to only 39%. At its current rate of growth, XEC (now in excess of 31%) will likely achieve dominance within the next two weeks. While almost by definition, XEC is the most adept COVID strain to date at evading existing human immunity, there has fortunately been no sign of it causing more severe symptoms than any of its Omicron predecessors.