This week’s composite chart shows a somewhat mixed picture, with no clear indication of the expected holiday-season surge in new COVID infections having yet begun.
Looking at the composite chart, the good news is that Ontario’s positivity rate for PCR COVID tests remains at roughly 40% of what it was this time last year. Hospital admissions and ICU occupancy rates, however, have risen over the past several weeks, albeit only a quarter of last year’s comparable rate. While not included in the chart, Canada’s overall municipal wastewater PCR test results indicate that the quantity of circulating COVID viruses has been relatively constant over the past month.
The more independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada have modestly reduced their estimate of both Canada and Ontario COVID risks since last week. Their most recent estimate of the number of Ontarians being currently infected and therefore infectious has fallen to one in 184 people, significantly below the previous one in 133.
Public Heath Canada’s biweekly report on currently-circulating COVID variants in our country is relatively unchanged, with the currently-dominant XFG family of Omicron strains now accounting for roughly 72% of new infections. The two most prevalent strains, the original XFG and second-place XFG.3, are slightly down, but other members of this very prolific family have more than made up the difference. The fastest-growing variant, QF.2, rose from 0.5% to 6.2% over the past 10 weeks, but it is still too early to guess whether or not it is likely to challenge XFG for dominance as the season unfolds.