Welcome to
Ron’s COVID-19 Page
Who We Are
This site shares the results of an ongoing personal project to better understand why the pandemic developed in such a damaging way in Canada, what other jurisdictions have done to better protect their citizens from those impacts and what we can collectively do to reduce the possible carnage from futures wave caused by this rapidly-evolving virus. It neither represents nor receives funding from any other person or organization. The sole purpose is to provide the latest and most meaningful data and insights related to the pandemic and its impact on our society in a readily accessible format. You will find many meaningful charts and analyses which provide context for the statistics summarized in the above table by clicking on the Global, Canada, Ontario and Kingston menus. For more details, see the About page.
Weekly Pandemic Update
February 1 to 7
The official data published over the past week strongly reinforces my sense that the usual end-year surge in new COVID infections has now passed and, apart from the perennial risk of a new, more infectious variant emerging, we can expect rates to continue to fall well into the spring months.
As illustrated in this week’s composite chart, national municipal wastewater COVID viral counts have already declined to early November levels. Likewise Ontario COVID hospitalizations and ICU bed occupancy. Ontario PCR test positivity rates have flattened but, as per my previous hypothesis, those rates were distorted by an unusually high number of seniors and health-care workers getting tested for flu-like symptoms which turned out to be due to one of the other circulating seasonal respiratory viruses. With those infections returning to more normal levels, test positivity rates should soon again serve as a good leading indicator of changes to COVID incidence.
The more independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada have updated their estimate how many Ontarians are currently afflicted by a COVID infection from one in 94 to one in 108.
Public Health Canada’s biweekly report on circulating COVID variants shows an unusual pattern in that there is no one strain even close to dominance. Instead, we have two proliferating families competing, both consisting of recombinant strains. By the narrowest of margins, NB.1.8.1 is the single most prevalent at just under 15%. Along with LF.7, it was the parent of XFG, which rapidly proliferated into a family of subvariants that together account for almost half of all new infections. But the four PQ strains are growing much more rapidly and will likely soon overtake their XFG rivals.