The latest Canada-wide and Ontario official public health data suggest that the usually deep seasonal low in new COVID infections is coming to an end and that numbers will start a modest climb in coming weeks.
The Canada-wide municipal wastewater COVID testing curve over the past eight weeks shows that the unusually deep summer decline in viral counts may have bottomed out, replaced by a very slight rising trend. That small rise from the lowest values of the pandemic to date is mirrored in the latest Ontario PCR COVID testing results as well as in the previous week’s near-zero Ontario COVID hospitalization and ICU bed occupancy rates.
The more independent health statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada have not yet updated their estimate of several weeks ago of only one in every 400 Ontarians having been infected and therefore infectious, a number which I believe that we will find to be considerably lower when they next report.
This is the off-week for Public Health Canada’s biweekly report on the relative “market shares” of currently-circulating COVID variants. We will have to wait until next week to see whether or not the usually oscillation between the Omicron families vying for dominance (XFG and PQ) continues.