Tag: COVID-19

I know this isn’t local news but COVID affects us all. If you pay attention to the (I hate to say mainstream) conventional media, it appears that a crisis is imminent with regard to hospital beds in Ontario and in particular, intensive care beds. Unlike conventional media, we at Weston Web are not government funded.

There has been a startling increase in infection recently compared to previous waves ofCOVID.

Looking at the data from Ontario’s own excellent website the black line shows the number of hospitalizations since April 2020 while the shaded area shows the daily numbers of active cases. The number of people in hospital has not risen in proportion compared to previous waves.

Despite the huge numbers of infections the latest wave, adult ICU beds don’t appear to be at a crisis point at the moment. In fact, despite rising numbers ofCOVID patients in ICU, availability has increased by 43 beds since January 6th.

While the number ofCOVID patients in ICU is rising, so is bed availability. Over the past 30 days, available ICU beds have been as high as 802 on December 26 to a low of 540 on January 6. Indeed, if we look back a few months, we can see that there is flexibility in the system.

Hospitals have been able to re-assign beds to ICUs in order to meet demand. Between May and July last year there were 2554 ICU beds. The number currently stands at 2343.

The next chart is from the Ontario Science Table – an advisory group to the Government of Ontario. While being fully vaccinated doesn’t fully protect you from gettingCOVID, it vastly lowers your chances of getting severe symptoms. Look at these numbers of hospitalized and ICU patients by vaccine status.

Considering that almost 90% of Ontario adults have been double vaccinated, the rate of severe disease in the unvaccinated is startling.

Interestingly, while being doubly vaccinated lowers the chances of serious infection, recently, it is less protective against COVID as is shown in this next chart.

As of December 23, it appears that fully vaccinated people are more at risk of getting COVID. One can speculate on the reason for this but it’s quite surprising.

Lastly, if there was any doubt remaining; according to the Ontario Science Table, in the last month, Omicron has taken over from Delta as the dominant strain in Ontario.