Thought of the Day - April 11 2021 - By the Numbers

The World

It was looking like South America, which has seen a massive increase in daily deaths since the end of February, was turning things around, but they have again returned to peak levels (five times the world average). Europe, North America, and even Asia, are also seeing a slight uptick in mortality.

Looking at a cross-section of South American countries you can see that Brazil is still in the most trouble. On Friday Brazil reported as many new deaths as the next five highest countries combined! However, unfortunately, on a per capita basis, Uruguay is now not far behind.

Canada

In Canada, our cases continue to climb. We are now seeing double the number of new daily cases in comparison to two weeks ago. And by next week we will probably have the same number of daily new cases as at the peak of the second wave. This translates to Active Cases increasing by 24% over the last week.

New case numbers across Canada's leading provinces made steady gains this week. Most significantly in Alberta; remember in the last report they were running at a daily rate of 15 per 100,000, they are now double that.

Hospitalizations are up 40% in the past 7 days, as 1,000 UCI beds across the country now devoted to COVID-19 patients.

Daily deaths are up 20% from two weeks ago but are still well below the second wave. This is partially due to the lag effect between cases -> hospitalizations -> deaths. Deaths are still considerably higher in Saskatchewan than in the rest of the county.

Vaccinations

As vaccinations continue to stall in Europe, Canada has moved up a number of places we are now 35th in vaccinations per capita.

Trudeau has described the Federal target as "most citizens are expected to be vaccinated by September 2021". So, looking at this conservatively it means Canadians who want or are eligible for the vaccine (75%) will get the first shot by the end of September. Here is how we are doing.

Looking at BC, where I understand the target is all people can get a first shot by the end of July, we did manage to increase our daily capacity slightly last week. That said, there was some effect due to the holiday weekend. Hopefully, we will close this gap (between the grey and blue lines) in the coming weeks.

Unemployment

Some good news on the economic front. In Canada, employment rose by +1.6% in March, this brought employment to within 1.5% of its February 2020 level. The unemployment rate fell 0.7 percentage points to 7.5%, the lowest level since February 2020 (March 2020 was 7.8%). Quebec has the lowest unemployment in the country (6.4%). British Columbia's unemployment rate remained unchanged from February at 6.9%.

Shout-Out

This week's shout-out goes to Canadian businesses. Despite all of the restrictions, uncertainties, and displacements, it is great to see, overall, recovery is happening.

Cheers

Cliff