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
August 23 to 29
There is not much to report on the COVID front because most of the official data sources from which I draw the statistical public health information publish bi-weekly and this was the off week. The only updates that were available were those from Ontario Public Health and the compilation of national municipal wastewater PCR test results. Likewise, The more independent health statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada have not yet updated their last report of several weeks ago, which then estimated one in every 280 Ontarians being currently infected and therefore infectious.
The Canada-wide municipal wastewater COVID testing curve continues its very slow rise from their early-June seasonal low. What’s most relevant is that viral counts are running at only a third of what was measured last year at this time.
Ontario PCR COVID testing results continue to fluctuate around 1% positivity, which is less than a sixth of what they were running a year ago. That is consistent with Ontario COVID hospitalizations, which are about 20% of last year’s numbers.
Next week’s report should be more interesting as I’m looking forward to Public Health Canada’s update on currently-circulating COVID variants given the unusually rapid changes in the relative “market shares” of the competing families of Omicron variants, as well as the arrival of new strains.