Public Health Agency Canada (PHAC) indicates a total of 17,063 confirmed cases of COVID-19 nation-wide as of April 6th, with 345 fatalities. The resulting raw Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of 2.0% does not take into account the number of unreported asymptomatic cases, which Imperial College London (ICL) has estimated at nineteen times reported cases globally. The WHO expects that the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) will be lower when corrected for unreported cases. This would result in an IFR of 0.1%.
For context, CDC estimates that in the US “… influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.” This would indicate an IFR of 0.08% for influenza, virtually identical to the 0.1% estimated for COVID-19 in Canada. Infection Prevention and Control Canada (IPAC) recorded 42,355 cases of influenza during the 2019-20 flu season. Statistics Canada shows 8,511 deaths during 2018 from influenza and pneumonia. Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada, responsible for 30% of all deaths annually (or about 85,000). Johns Hopkins provides relevant comparative data:
Infections
COVID-19: Approximately 1,286,409 cases worldwide; 337,933 cases in the U.S. as of Apr. 6, 2020.
Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.
Deaths
COVID-19: Approximately 70,356 deaths reported worldwide; 9,653 deaths in the U.S., as of Apr. 6, 2020.
Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.
Bear in mind when viewing the comparative statistics that influenza is treatable, COVID-19 is not.
348,105 people in Canada have been tested to date for COVID-19, with 17,581 confirmed cases. This means that only 5% of those tested were actually infected with COVID-19. Another way of looking at that is that 95% (or most) people who thought that they were infected with COVID-19, probably had the flu.
The PHAC Epidemic Curve shows a significantly decreasing number of reported cases daily:
On April 6th and 7th PHAC recorded no new cases. Although the number of new cases reported daily is decreasing; PHAC advises, “The number of illnesses in Canada is continuing to increase and has not yet peaked.”
It is difficult to reconcile published factual data with Ontario Premier Doug Ford's dramatic “modelling projections”. The model suggests “3,000 to 15,000 people in Ontario will die over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1,600 deaths by the end of April”, a twentyfold increase in fatalities.
The Ontario projections are based upon modelling presented in a slide presentation entitled “Covid-19 Modelling”. It was developed by several unnamed experts at Ontario Health, Public Health Ontario and researchers at Ontario universities, led by the COVID-19 Command Table.
Disclaimers include:
- As with any model, the farther out predicted, the more uncertainty there is in the predictions.
- Assumptions were used to inform the model.
According to the presentation, experts based the projections on observed data and what is known from other countries. Data from different countries however, varies greatly with counting methodology, testing, CFI vs. IFR, availability of peer-reviewed research data and ascertainment bias (During an epidemic, doctors are more likely to attribute a death with complex causes as being caused by the disease in question). A BBC Future article stated “In Italy, an epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak, the death rate at the end of March stood at a sobering 11%. Meanwhile in neighbouring Germany, the same virus led to fatality rates of just 1%. In China, it was 4%, while Israel had the lowest rate worldwide, at 0.35%.”
Sound advice from Prime Minister Trudeau, "We need to make sure we have a better grasp on the accuracy of the data before we put projections out there."