Thought Of the Day - February 20 2022 - By the Numbers

Death rates in North America continue to decline and are now converging with Europe where they continue to see an increase, especially in the east. That said, reported deaths in Mexico saw a sharp growth this week. Mexico had significant case increases in its tourist destination states Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur back in January but cases have dropped there since - thus this recent increase in deaths could be simply a reporting catch-up from the previous week that was curiously low.

Overall the world rate is flat - while the Omicron wave subsides in much of the world, however, reopening inevitably means pockets of endemic COVID resurfacing.

Closer to home the more remote regions (Canadian territories and eastern islands) seem to be where new cases of Omicron are still the most prevalent. The number of people in hospital testing positive for COVID in Canada is now half what it was at the peak.

As we have talked about several times in the past ( Thought of the Day - April 1 2021 - Are We in Deep Doo-Doo? ), looking at COVID-19 concentrations in wastewater is a good proxy for the overall level of infection in a community. As you can see, here in greater Vancouver levels have been dropping since the beginning of the year.

With the Canadian provinces announcing the wind-down of COVID restrictions one by one, Canada's stringency index had also started to drop (Canada moved from 5th highest in the world at the beginning of the month to 11th last week), however, with Trudeau invoking the Emergency Measures Act all bets are now off.

This week's shout-out again goes to Saskatchewan and their campaign to put pandemic thinking behind them. This week they dropped provincial use of vaccine passports, they are also no longer reporting COVID statistics on a daily basis, as they continue with the plan to wind down all restrictions by the end of the month.

Cheers

Cliff