I unfortunately had to skip last week’s update because the government departments upon whose end-week statistical reports I base these posts were silent due to the Good Friday statutory holiday. The now-available data from those reports suggest a continuing slower-than-usual seasonal decline in new infections.
As illustrated in this week’s composite chart, Canada-wide municipal wastewater COVID viral counts continued their relatively steep seasonal decline of the past several weeks, down to roughly the same level as last year at this time. Ontario case data, however, is more nuanced. PCR test positively rates are declining more slowly than last year at this time and remain slightly higher than their 2025 equivalents. Ontario COVID hospitalization and ICU bed occupancy rates remained generally stable rather than declining thus far this year, and are twice those of last year at this time. That suggests that the current family of COVID variants may cause somewhat more severe symptoms, at least among the elderly and more vulnerable.
The independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada estimate that one in every 69 Ontarians are currently infected and therefore infectious. That is somewhat worse than their March estimate of one in 82 people.
Given the above concern regarding symptomatic severity, Public Health Canada’s weekly reporting on the relative “market shares” of currently-circulating COVID variants should have been interesting to view. Unfortunately, their weekly data download has not been updated in the past two weeks, which leaves the chart unchanged with early March data. Hopefully, that will have been resolved by next week’s report.