Thought of the Day - April 25 2021 - By the Numbers

Great news from Israel. On Friday, Israel recorded no new daily Covid-19 deaths for the first time in ten months. The last time Israel reported zero Covid-19 deaths was at the end of June last year after lockdown measures curbed the first wave of infections.

As you are aware Israel has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world (the highest in countries with over 1M population). On Thursday, the country reached the milestone of five million COVID-19 vaccinations. Almost 55% of the population is now 'fully vaccinated' (kind of a misnomer now big pharma is promoting booster shots for later this year).

While Friday may have been an anomaly in Israel, looking at the trajectory soon it will be the norm.

Here in Canada, we have taken the approach of delaying the second shot but we can use the 'vaccines administered per 100 people' metric to give an indication of the timeframe when Canadians could see the same.

Israel is currently at 120 doses per 100 people and Canada at 31. Canada is currently increasing this measure by five doses per hundred people a week, thus to get to 120 at our current rate will take almost 18 weeks, basically until the end of August. It should be noted that Israel's has been above 110 per hundred for a month now, and almost 9% of the country was diagnosed with COVID-19 versus Canada's 3% thus higher natural immunity, therefore Canada will take a little longer to reach the same level of resistance. In short, depending on supply, we should see the same here in Canada this September.

The second piece of good news - it looks like Canada's third wave may have peaked. While cases are up 2% from two weeks ago, they are down 4% compared to last week. Alberta and Manitoba are the main provinces where new case numbers are still increasing.

That said the impact of the dramatic case increases a few weeks ago are now coming to roost, hospitalizations were up 10% and ICU beds up 13% this past week. Deaths, that follow cases by a month or so are up 17% this week, for a 37% increase in the past two weeks. Ontario leads the country not only in the sheer number of fatalities but also in having almost double the number of deaths than the Canadian per capita average.

At least, for the first time since the first wave, Canada finally has a case fatality rate that is lower than the world average - yes you heard that right, for the past year if you were diagnosed with COVID-19 your chances of dying in Canada were significantly higher than average of the rest of the world - not surprising, I suppose, as we have not introduced any therapeutics ( Thought of the Day - January 26 - Therapeutics ).

A little closer to home I got tipped off, by an Islander, to have a look at some graphs to see one of the reasons why BC ferries stopped ferrying tourists.

You can see that the people in Island Health are doing the best of all the BC regions, particularly in this third wave. Below you can see the contrast in colour (cases per capita) between the south end of the Island and Greater Vancouver.

Moreover, the Southern Island subregion (south of Cowichan Valley - Sooke, Victoria, Saanich, up to Sidney and the Southern Gulf Islands - basically where the bulk of the tourist ferry traffic goes) a doing the best on the Island.

This week's shout-out is to Island folk. Whether you are in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island or Vancouver Island you have shown limiting travel from 'away' is essential in reducing the level of infection, and moreover, with the tenacity of islanders, elimination of COVID-19 is certainly possible.

Cheers

Cliff