Despite the continuing impoverishment in the quality and timeliness of pandemic-related public health information that our governments are deigning to share with us, it thus far appears that this year’s seasonal surge in new COVID infections will continue to be less severe than last year at this time. We have been very fortunate in that, while the ever-mutating dominant strains have been increasingly adept at evading prior immunity, none of the strains since the early-2022 emergence of Omicron have elicited typical symptoms anywhere near as severe as the earlier Delta strains. Given that such a mutation could occur at literally any moment, short-sighted, politically-motivated government complacency remains a severe and obvious risk to our collective health.
This week’s composite chart shows that the rate of new cases continues to rise, but more slowly than during the early fall. The seeming drop in the most recent week for most of the graphs is somewhat illusory since late-posted data almost invariably results in the most recent numbers being corrected upwards the following week. The overall most useful and credible estimate of individual risk of COVID infection is that of the non-governmental COVID-19 Resources Canada. Its most recent estimate is one in every 32 Ontarians being currently infectious. That’s more than enough for me to keep wearing my N95 mask in grocery stores and other indoor public places.
The latest US Centers for Disease Control data on COVID variants confirms that the currently-dominant KP3.1.1 strain is rapidly losing “market share” to the yellow-shaded recombinant XEC strain, which will likely achieve dominance within a matter of weeks. While Public Health Canada is slightly slower to report, its numbers are similar. Fortunately, this season’s free booster shot is now readily available from Ontario pharmacies and is likely to be effective at significantly improving our immunity to XEC. I got mine two weeks ago and found it to be essentially painless.