There has been very little change in what remains of the official Canadian COVID-related statistics released this past week, with a continued moderate rise in new infections consistent with our moving into the autumn respiratory virus season. There hasn’t been enough time as yet for the back-to-school effect to manifest in those statistics.
The three graphs in our composite chart all paint essentially the same picture. Viral counts from municipal wastewater counts are on the rise, despite the large Ontario proportion of the national numbers being woefully undercounted. PCR test positivity rates and COVID hospitalization/ICU rates are rising in a similar pattern to last year at this time, albeit from a higher base.
The latest monthly estimate by the more independent COVID-19 Resources Canada statisticians of the number of Ontarians currently infected, one in 26, is much higher than a month ago. That is sufficiently worrisome that I have now resumed my precaution of wearing an N95 mask in supermarkets and other crowded places, especially given that my immunity will have waned significantly due to it having been more than six months since my last booster. I’m impatiently awaiting Public Health Canada’s approval of the new, JN.2-formulated vaccine.
The latest Canadian data on the relative “market shares” of currently-circulating Omicron variants continues to be dominated by the KP-prefixed family of JN.1-derived strains. KP.3.1.1 is fully dominant, accounting for more than 62% of all new infections, and is the only one whose incidence currently continues to rise. It’s KP-cousins account for most of the remainder.