Looking at the composite chart, the seasonal surge in new COVID infections appears to be flattening. Canada-wide, municipal wastewater viral counts have stabilized at roughly half of last year’s levels, as have positive PCR testing results from the minority of Ontarians still eligible for those tests. Ontario COVID hospitalizations and ICU bed occupancy rates, which tend to be a lagging indicator, continued to rise but, again, at approximately have of the comparable rates a year ago.
The more independent statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada now estimate that one in every 94 Ontarians is currented fighting a COVID infection and are therefore infectious. While that is down from their December estimate of one in 58, it still merits considering N95 mask-wearing in crowded indoor places like supermarkets and concert halls.
What is new is significant changes to the COVID variants currently infecting Canadians. Public Health Canada has finally reported the most recent data after an irresponsibly-long month-long silence presumably due to the staff holiday season. During that time, a new “PQ” lineage (nothing to do with Québec separatists) has emerged to displace the previously-dominant XFG family. The single most common strain, PQ.2.1.3, now accounts for more than 19% of new COVID infections, a huge jump from around 1% as recently as November. Three others members of the PQ.2 family are rising within the list of the top 20 strains. The PQ lineage is a descendant of the XDV recombinant lineage, which emerged through a complex evolutionary path involving both XBB and JN.1 sub-variants. Thus far, like its recent predecessors, PQ infections cause relatively mild, bad-cold-like symptoms in vaccinated people with healthy immune systems, though there have been some reports of particularly sore “razor blade” throats.