COVID-19: Variant update for Ontario
New variant levels are still increasing in Ontario. BA.4/5 make up more than 20% of sequenced cases on June 12, 20022 ( app.powerbi.com ). 🧵1/
New variant levels are still increasing in Ontario. BA.4/5 make up more than 20% of sequenced cases on June 12, 20022 ( app.powerbi.com ). 🧵1/
The older BA.2 variant is decreasing significantly but even BA.2.12.1 seems to have slowed down making up around 37% of sequences, then BA.5 at 15% and BA.4 at 5%. 2/
It looks like the BA.5 variant has a substantial growth advantage over BA.2.12.1 in several countries right now including Israel (96%), USA (102%) and Japan (89%) ( ). 3/
Wastewater levels continue to increase in Ontario ( covid19-sciencetable.ca ). 4/
Ottawa wastewater levels have stopped increasing for the moment ( gilchrist.ca ). Some school boards finished this week and the rest finish next week so it will be interesting to see the impact of community transmission without school. 5/
I know multiple children who tested positive this past week on their last days of school so almost made it to the end of the school year, but didn't quite make it. :-( I hope none of them develop Long COVID (see below about how to get support for kids). 6/
Ottawa Public Health put out a warning this week that wastewater virus detection levels are high, the COVID-19 testing positivity rate is moderate and increasing, and there are new confirmed outbreaks which are currently low but increasing. 7/
OPH points out we are entering a new wave so it is important to use our layers of protection which also include masks and ventilation/filtering ( ). 8/
Hospitalization levels have stopped going down in Ontario as well ( public.tableau.com ). What about other countries that will give us an early warning and clue what will happen? 9/
Hospitalization and ICU admissions are up in many countries now. Patients admitted to hospital in England are up 41% in the past 7 days ( coronavirus.data.gov.uk ), and for the UK and Scotland, there are more than 1055 patients being admitted per day. 10/
You can see from the graph that hospital admissions in children have also spiked significantly in the past couple of weeks ( ilpandacentrostudio.it ). 11/
With all the reinfections happening more than a third of all infected child cases aged 5-14 are reinfections, and unfortunately some children are developing Long COVID after their 2nd and 3rd infections ( ). 12/
You can see from the graph the percentage of COVID-19 reinfections compared to all cases (7-day average) by age for June 14, 2022. Support services for kids with Long COVID can be found here ( longcovidkids.org ). 13/
How well do the current vaccines help protect against death in the Omicron era? The CDC has started releasing death rates for ages 50+ with booster doses ( #rates-by-vaccine-status" target="_blank" rel="noopener" onclick="event.stopPropagation()">covid.cdc.gov ). 14/
You can see from the data in April 2022 that unvaccinated people aged 50+ had a 42x higher risk of dying compared to people vaccinated with 4+ doses of vaccine. People 50+ with 3 doses of vaccine had a 4x higher risk of dying compared to people with 4+ doses of vaccine. 15/
Moderna and Pfizer are working on updated COVID-19 booster vaccines but due do the additional immune escape properties of BA.4/BA.5 variants, neutralizing antibody levels were 3x lower than compared to BA.1 ( ). 16/
BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/5 are causing a lot of infections and reinfections because of increasing immune escape ( ). 16/
Even if you are not at high risk of hospitalization or death, the bigger impact on the world for those that get infected will be long-term complications. 17/
The CDC estimates approximately 1 in 5 people ages 18+ have a health condition that might be related to their previous COVID-19 illness, otherwise known as Long COVID ( 18/
How can you protect yourself? The best way is not to get infected. In order to do that you need to understand how infection occurs and how to assess the risk which you can learn more about here ( ). 19/
More BA.5 global analysis, often BA.2 going down that is hiding the rise of BA.5 ( ). 20/
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