Recommendations this week are still cautious, even for regions where the forecast is currently ELEVATED or HIGH.
Why? Because @INSPQ survey of RAT/PCR+ people for week of Feb 5 found 69% increase compared to week before. It's often the first indicator to go up at start of surges
@INSPQ Data for other indicators that go into our forecast, such as test positivity rates, waste water are roughly 2 weeks behind the forecast date.
We're not seeing forecast scores shoot up yet, although curves are slowing/bending back up for multiple regions.
So, caution advised.
Canadian COVID Forecast Feb 12-18, 2023
CANADA
VERY HIGH
About 1 in every 47 people is infected.
HOW TO HELP:
Mask, get your booster, avoid non-essential indoor public places, social gatherings.
Higher risk: also avoid outdoor social gatherings.
HOW TO HELP:
Mask, get your booster, avoid non-essential indoor public places, social gatherings.
Higher risk: also avoid outdoor social gatherings.
Bloody Twitter. Keeps prompting me to save or discard tweets when I want to send them. It's possible there may be some service interruptions on this thread, folks.
You'll hear anguished cries from the direction of Ontario.
For those who often wonder why the COVID Forecast for QC goes up and down faster than for many regions (and doesn't get stuck at the highest points for as long).
Part of it is reporting--QC reporting is faster and more complete than most Canadian regions, and there's not as much of a problem with severe outcomes trickling in for weeks/months after they've happened.
But also, QC and the Prairie provinces too seem to have had a better go of Omicron than provinces that likely had experienced fewer severe outcomes and infections pre-Omicron.
The other thing that's important to know about the Prairie provinces and QC is that reporting of hospitalization and ICU admissions is pretty decent in all of these provinces. We don't see as much of the prolonged, dragged out reporting that we see in Atlantic Canada and Ontario.
BC hospital/ICU admission reporting is pretty decent too, at least compared to ON and Atlantic Canada. BC death reporting has really improved in the last year or so, but it's still a bit protracted, which may contribute to BC COVID forecast scores stalling at high points.
We also know from @COVIDimmunityTF seroprevalence data that as of early Dec, BC, ON and Atlantic provinces still had the lowest % the total population infected at least once.
So it's likely there's a bit more tinder (and more expected severe outcomes) in these provinces.
The graphs I'll show are a bit complicated. But they're simplified versions of what you can find on the tracker, because I've deselected % excess mortality for individual age groups to make it easier to see patterns.
This graph here shows the data for fast-reporting provinces (NL, QC, AB, BC), with a comparison to the values for Canada as a whole (including the slow-reporting provinces).
For the last year, I've found that positive test (RAT or PCR) survey data from @INSPQ have provided the fastest early warning indicator of new waves.
QC test positivity in survey ending Feb 5 increased 64% compared to week before.
It had declined from Dec 25 to Feb 5.
@INSPQ It's still only at half the infection numbers from the week of Dec 25 (the highest point in the most recent surge in QC), but if we've seen a 64% increase in the most recent week, I'd guess QC will be at the height of the Dec 25 surge by the week after.
@JustinTrudeau@GovCanHealth One third of Canada's 215,000 COVID hospitalizations up to March 31, 2022 have not yet been reported to PHAC.
And there is some serious under-reporting of severe COVID outcomes happening in multiple provinces, including Canada's largest province.
@JustinTrudeau@GovCanHealth Plus all-cause mortality reporting so slow that we're only now learning specific causes of death from 2021, including but not limited to COVID.
Apologies for missing a week last week--it was my fault, not the team!
For the weekly recommendations we provide, we're still using recommendations for VERY HIGH and SEVERE scores even for regions that have dropped below these thresholds.
Why? Because the projections we do are based on data that is already nearly 2 weeks old d/t reporting delays.
We're seeing a decline in severe outcomes in multiple provinces, with decline in waste water and estimated total infections in many.
It looks like we're coming out of the holiday wave/surge--the duration looks fairly similar to the surge we saw around Thanksgiving.
But....as you can see from this image here, estimated actual infections are continuing to increase for multiple provinces (CAN, BC, NL, NS, ON, North)--not fast (except for North), but steadily.
If/when we see hospitalizations pick up we'll likely be in the XBB.1.5 surge/wave.
Before I share province info, it's important to know that estimated infection numbers are similar to recent numbers for the UK, even without much XBB.1.5.
Here's a screenshot from @ONS showing infection numbers from randomly sampled testing.
About 1 in 20 people infected.
@ONS There have been big changes in the most recent week, partly because December holiday data finally came in and we started getting waste water data for the end of December/early January.