Thread by @jeffgilchrist

Stats update for Ontario, Canada (Apr. 3, 2023)

This thread will highlight the latest stats for Ontario including COVID variants, hospitalization and death rates by age, total Ontario deaths by year and month, and new results from an Ontario child vaccine study. 🧵1/ #LongCovid

I have created a new web page for weekly Ontario stats that can be found at: covid.gilchrist.ca/Ontario.html 2/

#CovidAwarenessWeek #BringBackMasks #NotMild #CovidIsntOver #CovidIsAirborne

The XBB.1.5 "Kraken" variant is completely dominating in Ontario right now with more than 73% of sequenced tests, while the BQ.* variants are now below 15% after peaking at 60% in late January 2023. 3/

The XBB.1.9* "Hyperion" family is starting to gain steam now but still remain below 6% of sequences. 4/

Looking at specific variants, XBB.1.5 "Kraken" is the majority of sequences with 63.7%. This is significant in that there were so many different BA.5 variants circulating at the same time that no specific one became the majority. 5/

Even the recent BQ.1.1 "Cerberus" variant (a descendant of BA.5) only made it to 30% of sequences in Dec. 2022. BQ.1.1 now sits in second place at only 5% of sequences and CH.1.1 "Orthrus" in third place at 3%. 6/

The variant visualization tool was created by Mike Honey @Mike_Honey_ ( app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjo… ). 7/

Since school started in September, the hospitalization rate per 100K population in Ontario breaks down to the following percentage on average:
80+ = 75%
60-79 = 14.4%
0-4 = 5.6%
40-59 = 2.4%
20-39 = 1.1%
12-19 = 0.6%
5-11 = 0.8%

8/

We know that age is a huge risk factor for severe disease with COVID. Our oldest adults 80+ make up 75% of the hospitalization rate, then those aged 60-69 at 14.4% but then it goes to our youngest population aged 0-4 at 5.6%. 9/

The graph lets you see visually this percentage change over time where purple are our youngest children, then orange and yellow are the oldest adults. 10/

If you prefer to see a more traditional graph showing the explicit hospitalization rate/100K population that is available on the website: covid.gilchrist.ca/Ontario.html 11/

This data isn't easy to come by since Public Health Ontario only provides recent hospitalization rates by age and no access to the raw historical data so I have been saving it over time. 12/

If you go back to the Omicron BA.2 variant wave in March 2022, children age 0-4 were doing even worse making up about 15% of the hospitalization rate which was similar or worse than the 60-79 age range. Omicron was not mild or kind to our pediatric population. 13/

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 14/

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. 15/

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. 16/

With COVID deaths, the rate/100K population is again massively skewed towards the oldest population, with adults age 80+ making up 91.2% of deaths and adults 60-79 8.1% on average since September 2022. 17/

According to the Ontario government, deaths where COVID was the cause or contributed to the death have been increasing each year in the pandemic so far with 4119 in 2020, 4753 in 2021, and 5315 in 2022. Note, this data may be incomplete and underreported. 18/

A further breakdown by month can be found on: covid.gilchrist.ca/Ontario.html 19/

While tracking severe COVID disease and death is important, many times more people in Ontario will be impacted by Long COVID (Post-COVID condition) but provinces don't seem to be tracking or providing any of that data to the public. 20/

The federal government in Canada recently published a report on Long COVID and found that as of Aug. 2022 more than 1.4 million Canadians (15% of adults who got infected with COVID) have experienced symptoms for more than 3 months ( science.gc.ca/site/science/e… ). 21/ #LongCovid

"These include respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological and cognitive impairments and they can be debilitating." 22/

The report also states Long COVID, "has a significant socioeconomic impact on individuals and communities. Among other things, PCC impacts the labour market, the workplace, and social support programs." 23/

With this in mind, provinces need to do a lot more to help prevent infection in the first place such as improving infrastructure to provide clean air like we have for clean water. Here are some examples of what can happen if we don't do that (

https://twitter.com/jeffgilchrist/status/1617492887461318656

). 24/

Read more about the importance of indoor air quality, not just from viruses (

https://twitter.com/jeffgilchrist/status/1607379781892575234

). 25/

The one page unrolled version of this thread can be found here: pingthread.com/thread/1642877…

@threadreaderapp please unroll