Thought of the Day - February 28 - By the Numbers

Well, here we are, the last day of February. The world has seen a shade under 115 million official cases, 90 million of whom have recovered. Last week I was talking about the reduction in new cases around the world, sorry to say this trend is no longer continuing.

After more than a month of steady decline, the world total of new cases is once again on the rise, and Canada is following suit.

As mentioned last week, the inexplicable exception still seems to be the USA ( Thought of the Day - February 21 - By the Numbers ).

With the exception of the Maritimes and two of the territories, the country is turning pink. And, for the first time since the very start of the pandemic, BC is above the national average - second after Saskatchewan for new cases per capita.

With this past week's uptick, we are now approaching a total of 80,000 cases in BC.

And this case increase is not just a testing artifact as, for the first time since the beginning of January, hospitalizations are also on the increase.

So with the arrival of March, unless we double down on prevention, sorry to say we may be seeing the start of a third-wave in many parts of the country and particularly in BC.

This week's shout-out goes to New Brunswick. After a tough start to the month, they have fully turned things around and this past week had the lowest per capita case rate of any province.

Cheers

Cliff