Thread by @jeffgilchrist

Stats update for Ottawa, ON, Canada (Apr. 2, 2023)

This thread will highlight the latest stats for Ottawa including wastewater, hospitalization, testing results, vaccine status for time since last dose, and new results from an Ontario child vaccine study. 🧵1/

These states are updated weekly on the weekend and can be found at: covid.gilchrist.ca/Ottawa.html 2/

From the COVID wastewater graphs you can see that levels are up again. When some new variants have been introduced we get massive spikes in wastewater levels but even the many smaller peaks are at levels similar to the peak of the first Omicron BA.1 wave back in January 2022. 3/

You don't hear anything in the news about COVID but current levels are similar that original Omicron peak (dotted orange line) and baseline levels have never returned to being low since. Now they fluctuate near half the Omicron BA.1 peak (red dotted line) or higher. 4/

Wastewater levels for Influenza A and B have not been detected for over a month but RSV levels are starting to rise again. 5/

Similarly to COVID wastewater levels, since the Omicron BA.1 wave, hospitalization levels (orange line) for people admitted *for* COVID have not returned to 0. There are now Ottawa residents constantly in hospital for COVID, usually at least 20 or more every day. 6/

There are actually more than that in the hospital but the stats only record residents, not the people who are in hospital for COVID but live outside of Ottawa. 7/

Similarly PCR test result positivity has remained above 10% since the first Omicron wave, and oftentimes closer to 20% in the past year. 8/

You can see the green line has waves of positively that with a slight delay (as expected) the hospitalization rate also increases as PCR test positivity increases. 9/

@OttawaHealth has been publishing some interesting data on vaccines showing how long ago people in various age groups had their last booster dose. This is important since antibody levels from COVID vaccines seem to drop rapidly after about 4 months from the last dose. 10/

As time goes on, we will likely see fewer people in the green category (booster less than 6 months ago) as protection starts to wane. The majority of people under 60 have not had a booster done in the past year now. 11/

An Ontario study was just published that looked at vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization among adolescent and pediatric COVID-19 cases between May 2021 and January 2022 ( journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… ). H/T: @RevivalCare 12/

There were a total of 62 children hospitalized, 47 unvaccinated, 15 who were vaccinated. In both adolescents and pediatric age groups, vaccination reduced the risk of hospitalization by 80% for those infected with the Omicron variant. 13/

The authors also point out that despite the immune evasion ability of Omicron, COVID vaccines continue to be associated with a lower likelihood of hospitalization among children even when the vaccines do not prevent infection. 14/

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