Thought of the Day - January 10 - By the Numbers

The world has now reached ninety-million official cases. and is closing in on two million deaths.

North America, followed by Europe, are still the main regions with the greatest number of new cases per capita - driven by the US and UK. Although, unfortunately, there has been a recent uptick in South America.

Deaths are following a similar pattern although you see South America is getting more deaths per capita than Europe now.

Hospitalizations are a good way to understand the level of impact COVID is having. While most countries do not report this figure here is a cross section of those that do.

As you can see, Canada is faring well - although this wave is now much more impactful than our first.

By province you can see Manitoba turned the corner in December, in Alberta things are improving, so it is Quebec, Saskatchewan and Ontario who are seeing new growth in admissions. BC has been flat for some time. The following is a more detailed breakdown in BC.

For some reason BCs COVID test positivity rate has been climbing as of late (in comparison positivity rates in some parts of London are now 30%).

This could indicate that case rates are increasing again, but more likely it is because it has getting harder to get tested in the province. As you can see we significantly curtailed testing between Christmas and the New Year.

On the vaccination front, more countries have started the rollout. Canada is closing in on 1% of our population having been vaccinated.

Here are some more detailed vaccination figures from across Canada (darker colour indicates higher percentage of the population have been vaccinated).

This week's shout out goes to Nunavut, who despite having the highest number of active cases per capita in the country in late November, are now COVID free.

Cheers

Cliff