2024 年 3 月 27 日

CNIW 北美华人健康

CNIW 北美华人健康

The US CDC announces new Coronavirus trends for the next month; what does Canadian data say?

Written By: PeiZhong Wang; Translated by: Suky Zheng

On October 22, the US CDC released updated data on the Coronavirus epidemic. Given the wide range of content, the following is only a brief introduction to the most pressing concerns. 

1: The current epidemic situation of the new Coronavirus variant

As seen from the table below, the most widespread variant in the United States is still BA.5. The monitoring data shows that its proportion has dropped from 85% two months ago to the current 62%, and predicts that this downward trend will continue. At the same time, the other variants in an upward trend are BA.4.6 (11.3%), BQ.1 (9.4%), BQ.1.1 (7.2%), and BF.7 (6.7). The BA2.75 variant, which was of most concern, accounted for only 1.6%. 

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The distribution of Coronavirus variants in the United States is somewhat close to the data in Canada. The following table is the relevant data in Ontario, Canada for early October, from: https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/ontario-dashboard/

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Two: Coronavirus hospitalization and death indicators

The graph below shows the Coronavirus hospitalization rate (1/1 million), which is relatively low in the United States (green line). Despite similar numbers in Canada (red line), there has been an upward trend in Canadian hospitalizations.

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The Coronavirus intensive care (ICU) rate (1/1 million) is at a low level in both the U.S. and Canada, and there is no obvious upward trend (below). 

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The Coronavirus death rate (1/1 million), both in the U.S. and Canada, has remained relatively low since May 2022, with no significant change.

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The picture below is the weekly average of deaths caused by Coronavirus, as released by the Public Health Agency of Canada on October 15. Though it is relatively low, it appears to show signs of increase.

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Three: short-term future forecast

The picture below shows the trend of hospitalizations for Coronavirus in the United States since August, as well as forecasts for the next month. The overall trend will be downward, but for the short-term future, the trend seems to be flat (lower right in the figure, in red).

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The weekly death toll from Coronavirus since August 1 is still on a downward trend and likely will not change significantly in the next month, though it may increase slightly. Comparable figures for Canada are not available.

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Four: Summary

Experience from the past few years has taught us that predicting the trend of the Coronavirus epidemic is very difficult, and trying to forecast long-term trends proves almost impossible. The different sub-variants of Coronavirus that have been monitored so far all belong to the “family” of Omicron, but the possibility of other new variants with high pathogenicity still exists. Therefore, we once again remind everyone to get vaccinated and continue to keep up with personal protection. In addition, there are various signs that the flu may increase significantly this year, so don’t forget to get the flu shot while getting the Coronavirus vaccine. 

Main references:

1. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

2. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#forecasting

3. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/forecasting/hospitalizations-forecasts.html

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