Thought of the Day - December 19 2021 - By the Numbers

Well, it has been quite the week. Worldwide case numbers are going up, courtesy of Omicron. That said, the good news continues concerning less severe Omicron symptoms. Looking at South Africa you can see that while deaths are creeping up slightly it looks like the connection between cases and deaths is finally broken - we will know for sure in the next week.

Like most countries in southern Africa, Omicron has pretty well wiped out the Delta variant.

Circling back to Canada however, things are not looking so good.

Delta is still the most dominant variant in our country. Even though the OurWorldinData figures are probably 10 days old (Health Canada is still reporting November data), there are still currently ten times the number of active Delta cases in Canada as compared to Omicron cases.

As the significant increase in new cases over the past week (we have now surpassed the peak of our fourth wave) are mostly Delta, we are now seeing hospitalizations starting to increase again. Unfortunately, Canada surpassed another milestone this week, we now have over 30,000 official deaths in the country.

Figures seem to suggest that Omicron is around 3-5 times more transmissible than Delta (forget the headlines of 70 times faster bronchial replication). We need to hang on until year-end before this wave truly converts from Delta to Omicron across the country. Of course, the challenge will then become the impact of escalating case numbers, especially when those in essential services need to quarantine. As many of us will get exposed to Omicron in January cases will continue to rise significantly. Even though medical complications should be much lower than with Delta, they will still happen. While it is probably premature to discuss, by January school reopenings might be retarded and, like in the UK, hospitals may need to discharge those who have no medical reason to be there.

This week's shout-out goes to Saskatchewan. They are the only province that did not see cases increase over this past week. Case counts are still lower in PEI and NFLD but they are starting to catch up to Saskatchewan now.

Cheers

Cliff