Thought of the Day - June 7 - By The Numbers

As you know over the past couple of months I have been recording, reporting and analyzing the Canadian case information. At first, understanding that our health authorities were scrambling, I knew getting consistent and timely data would be difficult. Next came the task of developing understandable metrics and graphs, particularly, as the press were reporting raw numbers not per-capita comparisons. As I mentioned last week there are now a number of agencies that are providing a state-of-the-art depiction of the data. You can see links to a couple of them here (along with the weekly graphs): https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/the-numbers

All that to say, I was thinking by now that the reporting process would be streamlined and the data normalized but I missed one factor, politics. Instead of the expected improvement, data is again getting harder to find and more inconsistent. For example, two times, in both Quebec and in Ontario, additional unreported deaths have been uncovered. Quebec, about 10 days ago, announced its new target of 14,000 tests a day. As they are still not making this, their reporting of testing has gone underground, enough so that CTV's daily page called "Tracking Every Case" could not figure out how to report testing figures for Quebec for much of this week. And yesterday Nova Scotia's officially stated they have had 999 recoveries, 61 deaths, and 3 people still in hospital (for a total of 1,063) but only have 1,058 cases. When questioned their chief medical officer admitted "the data isn't always congruent".

Anyway, while the western world has been quick to point fingers at countries that have not been accurately reporting, it is sad to see we have troubles here at home. After today, By The Numbers will discuss interesting trends rather than try to present the weekly Provincial figures.

Okay, so now to what I have managed to glean in the past week. Canada added about 5,000 new cases this week, continuing the downward trend for the third straight week. And 700 new deaths. Most provinces, BC included, are doing very well.

While Ontario is still having a few problems, and there were outbreaks and a death in the nearly "COVID-free" New Brunswick, Quebec is still the issue.

So while Canada is now 11th in the world in reported deaths per capita (of countries with over one million in population) Quebec is now on par with the UK who are second in the world after Belgium (you are 15 more times more likely to die from COVID-19 in Quebec than BC).

But at least we are starting to see some moves in combating the pandemic there. For example:

• Côte-St-Luc, a Montreal island northern suburb where an infamous wedding with attendees from NYC kicked off an outbreak, passes a bylaw making masks mandatory;

• The Montreal and Provincial Police have ramped up issuing tickets for coronavirus infractions;

• A recruitment campaign to bring online 10,000 orderlies across Quebec has seen over 70,000 applicants;

• Italian Week Festival due to start this week in Montreal's "Little Italy" will be virtual-only.

Here is an update on my estimated infection figures. Toronto is planning to antibody test 10,000 people, it will be interesting to see what they find. As you see here in Canada we are still just getting started.

This week's shout goes out to BC. Of the "big four" Provinces we are showing the way with our low number of per-capita total and active cases (partially due to our low testing), but after a poor start we are now edging out the leader, Alberta, for the lowest deaths per capita.

Cheers

Cliff