Thought of the Day - March 21 2021 - By the Numbers

In the news this week are a number of countries seeing a significant increase in cases in Europe. Last week we talked about eastern Europe but it seems countries like Sweden, Germany and France (who have just implemented a one-month lock-down) are also seeing a steady increase in cases.

On the other side of the world, the island states of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, who largely escaped the 2020 waves, are in trouble. In Indonesia, while cases rose sharply at the beginning of the year they have been subsiding as of late. However, Papua New Guinea is on its way up. Given their limited resources, the real number of cases is far higher than reported. For example, in Indonesia, the test positivity rate is around 20%, in Papua New Guinea it is 40% or eight times what we typically see in Canada, meaning the majority of tests are probably only done when people are forced to seek medical attention.

When the EU halted AstraZeneca vaccinations this past week, Australia tried to obtain a million doses of their surplus vaccine to provide to Papua New Guinea. Australia also cancelled charter flights and outbound travel to Papua New Guinea for the next two weeks, as they have already found 32 cases from PNG in Queensland.

India has also seen a resurgence in cases. Hospital wards are filling up in states such as Maharashtra.

Cases in Canada continue to slowly increase, driven by Ontario and BC. As predicted, BC now has the highest new case rate in the country, edging out Saskatchewan.

While it appears that Nunavut leads the country in deaths per capita, this was just the addition, on Wednesday, of three deaths from the beginning of the year that were not included in their earlier counts (Québec did some true-up this week also). It is Saskatchewan that continues to lead the country in deaths, the aftermath of their high case-counts last month.

Looking at vaccinations, here is a list of the top countries (excluding a number of island states) with Canada, India and Indonesia shown for comparison.

The US continues to ramp up its vaccine program, this past week they celebrated administering 100 million doses.

On the single-dose scale, this weekend Canada will be closing in on 9% of our population. You will notice that Nova Scotia is falling further behind. Initially, this was because vaccines destined for NS (and NB) were redirected to the Territories, however, now it is simply that Nova Scotia was the last province to comply with Canada's single-dose policy. They will now be redeploying their second-dose stockpile. On the other hand, Québec, who spear-headed the practice, has been vaccinating Montréalers over 65 for some time now.

This week's shout-out goes back to the Atlantic Provinces. The March 7th shout-out went to them as they had restarted talks aimed at re-establishing the Atlantic Bubble by June. This timeline has now been accelerated. They are now targetting mid-April! And maybe, just maybe, they will consider including Cuba this time around.

Cheers

Cliff