This is an “off” week due to some of our major data sources now being on bi-weekly schedules and therefore not having provided updates to last week’s statistics.
Fortunately, Public Health Ontario continues to publish weekly. The seasonal rise August and September surge in new COVID infections is quite apparent in the PCR test positivity rate graph included in this week’s composite chart. However, it hasn’t risen since last week’s results. One data point never constitutes evidence of a trend change as it may just be a statistical or data collection anomaly. We’ll need to wait for another week of data before drawing any tentative conclusions. COVID hospitalization rates continue to rise, but that’s the expected result of the previous week’s rise in test positivity. ICU bed occupancy, which tends to follow another week later, is still climbing relatively slowly.
Since COVID-19 Resources Canada hasn’t updated their risk estimates, I’ve substituted the Public Health Canada report on COVID municipal wastewater viral counts. That has been showing a similar but not as steep rising trend as the Ontario POC test positivity.
The latest data on currently circulating COVID variants will hopefully be available next week at this time.