Thread by @OttawaHealth

A VERIFIED GOVERNMENT ACCOUNT IS TWEETING ABOUT POOP. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.

We've seen a few "but there's only X people in ICU" comments of late in response to our warnings about our numbers.

Allow us to explain why that’s an issue in these eight (yes, only 8!) tweets. (1/8)

Hospitalizations & ICU cases are what we call lagging indicators. As in, they can take a week or 2 to manifest.

Think of it this way: someone who is exposed to COVID today isn't going to be in the hospital tonight.

The virus needs time to incubate (which can take days). (2/8)

Then, they will start to feel sick.

If they do go for testing, they’ll wait 1-2 days for results.

Then they'll begin isolating, but their health will worsen.

Then they'll seek medical attention. And if needed, they will be admitted to the hospital. (3/8)

So by the time the hospitalizations indicator on our dashboard goes up by 1, that one person may have had COVID for a while.

Hence, it's a lagging indicator...it takes time to show up in the counts. (4/8)

So, poop. Poop happens.

In fact, while not everyone gets tested, EVERYBODY POOPS.

And you can detect COVID in poop. So, when you poop, if you poop COVID into Ottawa’s sewage system, it will end up at Ottawa’s sewage treatment plant.

All of that happens within a day. (5/8)

Don’t worry: we don’t know whose poop it is. It's not labelled.

And it takes COVID-loaded poop from quite a few people before there is enough that the COVID-19 can be detected at the sewage treatment plant. So, yes, poop happens. (6/8)

The trouble is the COVID levels in poop have been rising sharply. So far that's been a useful indicator of what will happen to our cases within the coming days.

This is why we're worried. This isn't a "scare the poop out of you" tweet. It's a "please pay attention" tweet. (7/8)

Our actions today will impact our case counts in 1-2 weeks & impact our hospitalizations even further down the road.

So yes, poop happens. And we're paying attention to your poop.

Take care, Ottawa. Let's not flush our hard work away.

-OPH out. (8/8)