We’re coming down to the point where the only reliable metric is the number of people in hospital with COVID. Even there, nothing is simple. Hospitals have a broader definition of what constitutes a COVID patient. The number of people in hospital with COVID is the number the provincial government releases every day. But some public health units look at it more narrowly and don’t count people admitted to hospital for something else and are later found to be COVID positive, but don’t need COVID treatment.
The two methods of counting explain why hospitals say they are overburdened with cases while public-health-unit figures show something different. For example, in Ottawa earlier this week the city’s biggest hospital and two smaller ones say they have 146 COVID patients. Ottawa public health put the number at 26.
The Ford government is no longer in a position to act on meaningful data related to specific COVID threats. That’s why it was wrong to shut down the usual suspects such as restaurants, gyms and places of entertainment. It’s a move that will have, at best, a minor effect on case numbers this month, but a major effect on those targeted.
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