COVID COUNTS CONFUSING FOR NUMEROLOGISTS NEXT 6 WEEKS

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

SIMCOE-MUSKOKA — Waking up today is like the movie Groundhog Day.

Instead of worrying about the daily dip in temperature — to decide whether to go outside — people hanging on the corona case numbers feel doomed to repeat at least six more weeks of the deadly virus.

Confusing COVID counts that have now gone south — with talk of “negative numbers” — has Canadians feeling as though they should just go back to bed.

Simcoe-Muskoka reports just 36 cases.

Ontario 745.

Joy!

Not so fast.

An accounting glitch (it is tax season after all), says the province, driven largely by Toronto Public Health has skewed those figures with over reporting — or is it under reporting?

Not to be outdone, the North Bay Parry Sound Health Unit is reporting negative 14 cases.

Their counterparts in Peterborough report 1 negative case.

And that doesn’t mean negative testing cases.

This “IT glitch” offers false hope that can be lethal.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe to go out. To go back to school. There aren’t that many cases anymore.”

Don’t bet on it.

The risk isn’t worth it.

Not with another variant case emerging in Peel from South Africa.

That’s as variant cases rose from 69 on Monday to 110 today in Ontario.

And variants are reported in other provinces as well including 3 cases from the UK in New Brunswick today.

Public Health Ontario noted today that on Feb. 1, Toronto Public Health (TPH) migrated all COVID-19 data to CCM from their local CORES system and that this migration had an impact on today’s data.

Notably, it says, TPH’s case count is negative following the identification of duplicate cases and there were data corrections for some fields (e.g., long-term care home residents and health care workers).

As well, case counts for other public health units may have been affected by system outages related to the migration. Additional data fluctuations may occur over the next few days.

Elsewhere, Peel posted 334 cases and York Region 124.

NOTES:

  • More than half of Ontario’s 6,238 deaths have been in LTCs at 3,618.
  • The province has 17,451 active cases — with 341 people in ICU and 253 on ventilators.
  • Of the 344,600 people who have received vaccines, only 72,000 have received both the Pfizer vaccines or the one needed from Moderna
  • Ottawa and Novavax have announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to produce COVID-19 vaccine made in Montreal and will be available later this year, after most Canadians are expected to receive the vaccine.
Keeping masked remains the watch words as more confusing numbers were released by the province today.

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