This week’s composite chart once again confirms the moderate but continuing seasonal rise in new COVID infections. I’m still looking to find a more useful replacement for the Canada wastewater testing chart, the reliability of which has been severely degraded by the Ford government’s politically-motivated decision to drop the provincial testing program. After all, why collect information which could counter the pandemic-is-over narrative that so appeals to one’s precious voter base? The political strategists (whose salaries are paid by our taxes) appear to have determined that the lives which will be lost due to a lack of warning of the inevitable next COVID surge are a small price to pay, especially since they can be sure of never being held to account.
While Ontario PCR test positivity rates and COVID hospitalization/ICU rates have continued their moderate rise of the past six weeks, that has added up to a doubling of hospital admissions and a PCR test positivity rate which is already approaching last year’s peak.
The most recent estimate by the independent COVID-19 Resources Canada statisticians of the number of Ontarians currently infected remains one in 43 people. For myself, that is a sufficient reason to wear my well-fitting N95 mask in crowded indoor spaces such as supermarkets and concert halls, especially since, like most Canadians, my immunity will have seriously waned given that more than six months have passed since my last booster shot. I have already called my pharmacy to book an appointment in the second half of October, by which time they expect to have received supplies of the latest Moderna vaccine, formulated for the currently-dominant JN family of COVID variants.
The US CDC being late publishing its usual update, this week’s chart includes the latest Public Health Canada data on currently-spreading COVID variants. It confirms the utter dominance of the KP.3.1.1 strain, the only variant whose incidence continues to rise, now accounting for more 72% of all new Canadian infections. Overall, the JN.1 variant family from which it derives is responsible of essentially all new infections. Given that, at this stage of the pandemic, the dominant strain is almost by definition the one which is most adept at evading existing human immunity (whether for vaccination, prior infection or both), that fact alone is more than sufficient to motivate getting one’s next shot as soon as it becomes available.