Covid in Canada in fall 2023
Anecdotal instances of Covid have been on the increase in my neck of the woods over the last few weeks. Is it time to be concerned?
This blog is not the place for an in-depth look at the statistics on Covid. That is the job for competent medical specialists not a Church statistician. However I have done some digging around appropriate corners of the net to find out what seems to be going on. I hope the information I have gathered might encourage readers to decide what action they need to take in the coming weeks and months, and what they might want to encourage others, particularly congregations to do.
My main source of Covid data through the pandemic was www.worldometer.info. It is now reporting approximately 36,000 active cases throughout Canada. This compares with 81,000 this time last year and 7,000 in July. So there is definitely an increase in cases, as one would expect for this time of year.
Health Canada are reporting about 3700 hospitalisations, compared to 6200 hospitalisations this time last year ( https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/current-situation.html ). Again this has been on the increase since August.
The mainstay of monitoring of Covid in the general population, who may not report mild cases of Covid, is wastewater monitoring. Canada has a national web site to show cases of this at https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/wastewater/ Again this is showing an increase, but at levels similar to last year.
Two Covid19 websites show slightly different perspectives. Each of them are run by a volunteer group. WWW.covid19tracker.ca re-enforces the perspectives above. covid19resources is run by an academic group. It has a “Covid forecast” among other data items at https://covid19resources.ca/covid-hazard-index/ This is at its highest level for a year, which suggests that we should definitely be concerned about the rise in Covid cases.
Information from BC’s Provincial Health Officer, the soon-to-be-sainted Dr Bonnie Henry, instructs visitors and workers at health care facilities to wear masks, and invites all BC residents to have both covid and Influenza vaccines. I hope that churches would reenforce the encouragement to get vaccinated. And I think that Dr Bonnie’s order begs a question of whether churches should invite their often elderly congregants to consider masking again, as both Covid and Flu become more prevalent.
