The most recent official statistics on COVID-19 infections suggest that we are currently experiencing the deepest spring seasonal dip in new COVID infections over the entire pandemic to date. While it’s hard to imagine the numbers getting much lower, that drop is thus far continuing.
Turning to our weekly composite chart, the Canada-wide municipal wastewater COVID testing curve shows a levelling of the precipitous decline in viral counts which began in late February and is already at its lowest ever. That is consistent with Ontario’s PCR COVID testing results which show similarly low positivity rates. Ontario COVID hospitalization rate are similarly at low ebb. ICU bed occupancy rates were slightly lower last summer but the numbers are so small that statistical static can be expected.
In their most recent report, the more independent health statisticians at COVID-19 Resources Canada rate the current COVID risk as being moderate in every province, as well as Canada-wide, which is the best that I recall seeing thus far in the pandemic. They estimate the number of Ontarians currently infected and therefore infectious as only one in every 367 people, which is a big improvement over last month’s one in every 237.
Public Health Canada’s current biweekly report on currently-circulating COVID variants contained a big surprise. Early this month, the new PQ family of Omicron variants had surpassed the previously-dominant XFG family in terms of share of new COVID infections, the normal pattern being that XFG would continue fading into irrelevance. Instead, the current report show that the XFG family has returned to dominance, accounting for almost 75% of all new cases whereas PQ variants have plummeted to only 14%. The main cause was the new XFG.6 strain which over the past two weeks skyrocketed from less than 2% to more than 28%. The next-most-common strain is XFG.1.1, which more than doubled to 25% in that same period. There is thus far no evidence of XFG.6 causing more severe illness, higher hospitalization rates, or increased mortality compared to other currently-circulating variants. What obviously differentiates it is being more highly transmissible and adept at partially evading existing immunity. We’ll have to wait another week or two to see whether or not that transmissibility reverses the recent drop in new infections.