Mid-week Update for May 20

Canada has made a rapid improvement in tackling the number of daily deaths.

Daily deaths in Canada has come down from 179 on May 8th to 93 yesterday

I’d have done the update yesterday but I put it off because reported deaths were too low. I was concerned that perhaps the data was not tabulated properly because of the long weekend.

As expected, the reported deaths for Tuesday was higher (that came out in the report today). However, the trend is clear: we are finally lowering the number of daily deaths.

The end result is that our percentage increase in total deaths has really declined.

Today I’ll take a deeper look at Ontario.

I am unbelievably frustrated at Ontario’s testing.

Three days in a row of really poor test rate

Ontario performed only 7,000 tests yesterday, after performing only fewer than 6,000 tests a day before. Its goal is to perform 16,000 tests a day, which itself is too low a goal.

That said, new cases (despite showing a small rise) are still under control. Hopefully, the number is not low only because of low testing.

ICU patients and patients on ventilators are also down (despite the slight increase in today’s update). I put today’s rise the result of the long weekend, causing a delay in the tallying of data. The important point is that the numbers are down from Friday.

Ontario’s COVID-19 ICU patients peaked on April 26th

I find looking at the number of ICU patients to be a very reliable metric since it does not depend on fluctuating test rates.

Comparing Quebec to Ontario, Quebec’s number of new cases has been stubbornly slow to decline.

Charts from The Star

However, the number of new deaths in Quebec is, fortunately, also declining (slower than Ontario though).

There is other good news globally as well.

After being stubbornly high, the new deaths in the United States are finally declining as well.

Italy, France, Germany, and Spain are pretty much flat.

The United Kingdom is also doing better than it was before too.

Now that Ontario is in phase 1 of re-opening, we have to keep a close eye on 1) new daily rates, 2) new tests, and most importantly, 3) the number of patients in the ICU.

If new cases or new patients start to rise then we might have to roll back some changes.

Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.