Thought of the Day - November 22 - By The Numbers

During the past week Canada surpassed three-hundred thousand cases and eleven thousand deaths.

But guess which regions saw the highest number of new cases? No not Ontario, BC, Quebec, or even Alberta, it was Manitoba and Nunavut. Until a couple of weeks ago Nunavut had had no diagnosed cases, and they are now Canada's latest hot-spot, with the highest number of cases per capita.

Manitoba is seeing the effects from their significant rise in cases that started in October, which catapulted them past BC, Ontario and soon Alberta in cases per capita. This has now manifested with Manitoba recording by far the highest new death rate in the country.

Closer to home here are the top-10 regions in BC, those with the greatest number of case capita.

Burnaby is 14th with 342 cases per hundred thousand. Richmond is by far the best in greater Vancouver at 28th with only 195 cases per hundred thousand.

But rather than focus on cases, with what we now know about COVID Long-Hauling ( Thought of the Day - August 13 - COVID-19 Long-Haulers ) and as an real indicator of future deaths, hospitalizations are becoming a key indicator (please note on the graph cases and hospitalization are daily cases numbers where as the deaths shown are cumulative).

And as you can see hospitalizations have rapidly increased this month and are now standing at about 50% higher than the peak in the spring. Here is a more detailed breakdown, showing critical cases now standing about the same as the first wave.

This week a "hopeful" shout-out goes to BC. After very significant recent increase in daily diagnosed cases, rates have halved over the last few days. At this point it is not clear if this is a reporting anomaly, that people are reluctant to get tested under the new restrictions, or a positive sign the curve is flattening - fingers crossed it is the latter.

Cheers

Cliff