COVID-19 infections may be slowly starting to rise again in Canada, new data from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) suggests.
"There are signs of continued fluctuations in some COVID-19 activity indicators after a long period of gradual decline," the agency's online epidemiology update said on Tuesday.COVID-19 activity is still low to moderate across the provinces and territories, the update said.
Public health experts are using wastewater surveillance across the country and COVID-19 test positivity rates to determine the level of COVID-19 activity. XBB subvariants of the Omicron variant accounted for 99 per cent of COVID-19 cases that were genetically sequenced the week of July 16, the Public Health Agency of Canada said.
There's no sign that EG.5 is more virulent, meaning more likely to cause serious illness among otherwise healthy people, she said.“One of the universal truths in infectious disease is having a more contagious variant that's a little bit less virulent actually causes more death and disability than a highly virulent one that's less contagious because it can just find those vulnerable people," she said.
An increase in COVID-19 cases will once again take the heaviest toll on seniors and people who are immunocompromised, both Bowdish and McGeer said.Because the updated vaccines against COVID-19 expected this fall were developed to target Omicron's XBB subvariant family, they will likely"have really great efficacy at both preventing severe infection, but also at least temporarily reducing the risk of symptomatic disease," Bowdish said.
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