Thought of the Day - December 12 2021 - By the Numbers

World cases and deaths have once again plateaued. Why? Because Europe has also plateaued. That said, other than the US, which is now heading into their next wave, and South Africa, due to the massive community spread of the Omicron variant, all the rest of the top-10 in the total new cases last week are countries across Europe.

Russia and the USA are now pretty well tied for the most official daily deaths now (the crazy trough and peak in the US is just delayed reporting due to their Thanksgiving).

In Canada, as predicted, we are now entering our fifth wave.

Led by Quebec, Canada's new cases were up 25% over the last week. Indeed in a week's time, we will probably see new daily case figures nearing the peak of our countries fourth wave back at the end of September. Currently hospitalizations continue to decline, as people from the fourth wave finally recover or continue to pass away. That said it will be interesting to see how these new cases translate into hospitalization in the coming week.

What we have to hope is that Omicron becomes dominant in a hurry, otherwise, we could see the worst of both worlds. The death count of the more symptomatic Delta, rapidly followed with the case rates of the more infectious Omicron ( Thought of the Day - December 9 2021 - All We'll Get by Xmas is Omicron ).

I have not been reporting vaccination rates as of late as the target is confused by the addition of age groups and issuing of boosters. This makes comparisons, between countries and over time, problematic. China has administered more vaccinations than any other country, and Cuba and UAE are reported as having given the most doses per capita.

Looking at total doses per capita, much of the African continent and countries like Papua New Guinea are far behind. Places like Iraq and Afghanistan are also not doing so well.

This week's shout-out goes to Newfoundland and Labrador. They are bucking the trend seen across the rest of the Atlantic provinces with new case rates still flat. They, along with the NWT, now have the lowest per capita new case rates across Canada and the US.

Cheers

Cliff