Over half of all deaths in Canada have been in the Montreal area. My heart aches for all the lives lost.
It’s no longer interesting to look at Canada since different provinces are behaving very differently.
Nevertheless, Canada is continuing down the same path it has been for a few weeks.
Here’s a zoomed-in version:
Notice how the red line (the total number of deaths) in Canada is pretty much straight, neither increasing nor decreasing?
That’s because the country has been reporting roughly a similar number of deaths every day:
The blue line (Ontario) has clearly peaked and has been decreasing for a few days, but the red line (Quebec) is the problem. Let’s look at both provinces separately.
Ontario had its best day.
Ontario reported the lowest number of deaths since April 26th. The lowest non-Sunday report in over a month.
The province also reported the lowest number of new active cases ever since it started testing enough people.
The number of patients in the ICU showed 8th consecutive decline and reached the lowest number in a month.
Ontario also ran more than 17,000 tests, the third-highest test number so far.
It’s no wonder that the Provincial government is starting phase 1 of easing of restrictions. I cannot wait until we can see at least our families again.
Quebec, sadly, is a different story. It has contained the number of deaths so it stopped rising, but it isn’t able to start decreasing new deaths yet.
That is, sadly, truly frustrating.
A part of the challenge is that in Quebec new cases are not decreasing (they aren’t increasing either). This graph is interesting, typically after a peak, you see a decrease (a bell curve). But Quebec is behaving differently, mostly due to the challenges in Montreal.
In fact, Quebec is finding over 10.4 new cases per million every day. Ontario is finding 2.7 new cases.
It means that Quebec will continue to see the same number of deaths for a few more days (deaths is a trailing indicator).
As a result, the government of Quebec has canceled the May 25th planned openings of schools in Montreal. They will now stay closed until at least September.
No conclusion, I am really happy for Ontario and sad for Montreal.