#Coronavirus in Canada: These charts show how our fight to ‘flatten the curve’ is going

Note: Data in the charts last updated on Sept. 11 at 9 a.m. EDT. (Some provinces include their weekend numbers in Monday’s data announcement.)

How does one mark a six month anniversary? For new loves, it can be a gift. For a new virus that has ravaged swathes of Canada and the world, it’s a time for reflection.

On March 8, Canada recorded its first death of the pandemic, an elderly man who had contracted COVID-19 in his nursing home in Vancouver.  As of that day, only 67 Canadian residents had tested positive to the new coronavirus. Three days later, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

Six months later, more than 134,000 Canadians have contracted the disease; 9,200 died. Inside those basic numbers is the story of how the pandemic has evolved, week after week, month after month, and how it continues to change as autumn begins.

Percentage change of Canada’s Covid-19 cases from previous week

The initial exponential growth in the spring peaked in early May then gradually slowed, even after provinces started reopening their economies. Then, at week 18 in mid-July, the daily curve bottomed out at a smidge over 2,000 new cases. Since then, the number of new cases has climbed, unsteadily at first, then higher and higher until, by week 26, the nation added 3,778 new cases to its cumulative tally.

During the Labour Day weekend, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, stated that young people are responsible for a majority of the new cases in a Twitter thread: “In terms of age, the trend of increased COVID-19 activity among younger individuals has continued for many weeks, with people under 40 years of age accounting for over 62 per cent of cases in the latest data reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada.”

“During August, an increasing number of COVID-19 outbreaks were reported in food/drink/retail settings that tend to draw in a younger demographic,” says Tam. In particular, she notes that the highest per capita incidences of those infected were males and females between the ages of 20 and 29, who account for 10.7 and 11.4 cases per 100,000 population, respectively. That’s the equivalent of 107 and 114 cases per million population, which is around 10 times the national rate.

The surges of new cases can be seen in the provincial data. At the start of the Labour Day weekend, five provinces—B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec—recorded case rates higher than the previous week. British Columbia’s rate of 18.6 new cases per million population is 0.1 percentage point below its record high, set the previous day, while Alberta’s rate of 32.3 new cases is a level the province hasn’t seen since May 5, during the worst of the spring COVID-19 outbreaks. (The rates for B.C. and Alberta dropped since Sept. 4 largely because they only report COVID-19 data on weekdays.)

The other two Western provinces are in far better shape, and appear to be getting their summer outbreaks under control. While Saskatchewan’s new case rate has climbed in recent days, it’s still well below both the national rate and where the province was two weeks ago. And Manitoba has slashed its rate in half to just a smidge above the national rate.

Ontario, which had bottomed out its new case count at 5.7 per million in early August, was sitting at a seven-day rolling average of 8.8 cases as its residents crowded parks and beaches during the last long weekend of the summer. Ontario’s numbers are worsening, but are far behind those of next-door Quebec.

In late August, just before Quebec students returned to school, Health Minister Christian Dubé warned that his government were keeping a close eye on the province’s seven-day average of new cases. At that time, it was around 10 per million population. “Every day, we still have four, five or six outbreaks, and we have to monitor them closely. We see every day that these bushfires want to expand, and our job is to make sure it doesn’t become a forest fire,” he said.

The tipping point for considering rollbacks or other public health action would be 20 new cases per million population, Dubé said. On Labour Day, Quebec’s average hit 20.4, as a 110^th school in the province announced it had a COVID-19 outbreak, according to Covid écoles Québec, which keeps a running online tally of announcements.

Though Dr. Tam says that youths were driving the increases, she also notes that there are still a high numbers of outbreaks in long-term care (LTC) settings. The two provinces with the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths in such homes continue to experience deadly outbreaks. As of Sept. 8, Ontario has 19 active outbreaks at LTC facilities. The two worst in the Ottawa area; they have recorded the deaths of 71 residents to date. Quebec also has 19 active LTC outbreaks in its province; its two worst LTC outbreaks are in Montreal; they account for 182 deaths.

The region in the best shape is Atlantic Canada, which enveloped itself in a protective bubble that required anyone coming from away quarantine for 14 days. That rule hurt their tourist sectors but also kept COVID-19 largely at bay; in the last four weeks, only 48 cases have been recorded in Atlantic Canada. Nova Scotia, which has the highest number of cumulative cases in the region, hasn’t posted a new case rate of more than one per million population since June 1.

In the middle of August, Dr. Tam unveiled new federal modelling of how the COVID-19 pandemic could roll out in coming months which foresaw the current uptick in cases. Tam and other public health officials hope for a “slow burn” scenario in which Canada experiences a series of rolling hills and valleys of new cases, none as bad as what the nation experienced last spring, and all well within the capacity of Canada’s health system. Their fear is a spike of new cases followed by a tight succession of peaks and valleys, which would overwhelm the medical system and exhaust the nation.

Canada isn’t alone in dealing with a resurgence of COVID-19 as the days shorten. France and Spain are seeing their number of new cases climb beyond the official levels of their deadly spring outbreaks.

Closer to home, the American Midwest leads the United States in the number of new cases. Their caseloads began spiking shortly after more than 100,000 motorcycle enthusiasts made their way to Sturgis, South Dakota, for their annual 10-day gathering in August, which included lots of crowded indoor events. A new study by the Center of Health Economics & Policy Studies at San Diego State University concluded that the rally was a national super-spreading event, accounting for 250,000 cases, roughly one-fifth of all new cases in the United States in August. The health care cost of the Sturgis outbreak is pegged at US$12 billion.