Thought of the Day - July 4 2021 - By the Numbers

Being the July 4th, Independence Day south of the border, I figure I would have a look at the figures in the US. After declining for months, cases in the US have been creeping up as of late (up 10% in the past week).

This will likely accelerate, given the number of people traveling this weekend in the US. AAA anticipates 47.7 million people will travel by road and air from July 1 to July 5, a 40% increase over Independence Day travel last year and the second-highest travel volume on record.

Another driver is the spread of the Delta (India, B.1.617.2) variant. You can see, the other countries that have had significant outbreaks in recent months are dominated by Delta (unfortunately, there is no data from Canada as for some reason we are still not reporting on the variant that has become predominant around the world.)

Hospitalizations and deaths, while still declining, remain higher in the US than Canada. That said, the case-fatality rate in the US remains lower than that of Canada. The US recently reported that only around 1% of new deaths were fully vaccinated people.

Looking at a new case heatmap of the US cases, it is a real mixed bag across the country. Arkansas has the highest new case rate, seeing an increase of 64% over the past week.

Over the past year here are some US institutional leadership figures:

• Colleges: The University of Florida in Gainesville is the most affected campus with almost 10,000 reported cases to date (go figure);

• Prisons: The Fresno County jail has had 4,000;

• Military: USS Theodore Roosevelt still maintains the highest with 1,200.

In Canada, it is the Yukon that is really in trouble. They have more than 30 times the case rate of the rest of Canada, much higher than the US top-3 states. Case rates there are now as high as the peaks of previous waves in other provinces. Two, of the territories' five deaths, have come in the last week. With widespread community transmission, this also not going away anytime soon.

Sixty percent of the people in the territory are fully vaccinated, double the Canadian average, whereas over 80% of the reported cases are people that are unvaccinated. The outbreak is being driven by the Gamma (P.1) variant first identified in Brazil and is mostly affecting people between 10 and 29 years old; there have been 51 cases linked to Gamma so far (this variant Canada is tracking).

Canada moved ahead of the US last week concerning the number of vaccinations administered per capita. As it turns out that only half the US states reached the Federal July 4th "70% partial vaccination of adults" target. The country is currently at 67% of adults (55% of population) partially vaccinated. Moreover, given the momentum for the second shot in Canada, unlike the US, we will likely catch the lead peloton (Chile, Israel, Mongolia, UK, Uruguay) by the end of July.

This week's shout out goes to Canada, despite the issues in the Yukon, we are doing far better than the majority of the world ( Thought of the Day - July 1 2021 - Canada, One of the Few Bright Sparks in the Darkness of COVID ). According to Angus Reid, 86 percent of Canadians believe “things are getting better” with respect to the coronavirus, up 15 percent from a month ago. Moreover, things are not going too badly south of the border as well - good news given current discussion around easing border restrictions.

Cheers

Cliff