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SWPH cases continue to increase

September 17, 2021 | 8

The number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Elgin, St. Thomas and Oxford is continuing to rise, with 34 new cases in two days, for a total number of ongoing cases of 85. Almost half those cases involve persons under 30 years old.

Three SWPH area residents are hospitalized with COVID-19, two of them in intensive care units.

Southwestern Public Health was reporting 18 new cases on Friday, Sept. 17, up from 16 on Thursday.

Ongoing cases in West Elgin rose to six Friday from five Thursday and in Central Elgin to two from one, while one new case was discovered in Dutton Dunwich. St. Thomas and area fell to 11 from 12, while Aylmer and area stayed at eight, Bayham at two and Malahide at one. In Oxford, Woodstock increased to 25 from 21 and Tillsonburg and area to nine from seven, while three new cases were discovered in Norwich and two in Blandford Blenheim. South-West Oxford remained at eight, Ingersoll and area at five and East Zorra-Tavistock and Zorra at one each.

The infection rate for the region stands at 40.2 cases per 100,000 of population, up from 34 on Thursday.

Across Ontario, 795 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed Friday, down from 864 on Thursday.

Posted in News, News Headlines
  • Drake Larsen

    Ontario is running the highest qPCR cycle threshold rate in the world – nearly double WHO recommended maximum – case counts mean nothing in this context and this will never end until the testing protocol is changed.
    Moreover, case rate does not mean infection rate – just because this newspaper continues to conflate these disparate terms, don’t let their fear infiltrate you.

    • Daniel Smitherson
      • Drake Larsen

        Luckily, being trained in the sciences myself, I don’t have to rely on popular press or blogs by communications students. I can access primary literature and often raw data. The facts are:

        1) Canada is testing on the order of 40CT

        2) WHO says CT over 28 is non-diagnostic, Fauci says same for over 30.

        3) PCR at 40CT is going to “find” about >300% more cases than at 28CT.

        4) Sequences found above 28CT are likely “dead virus”; ie not-infective if they are viral at all.

        5) Until PHAC reports on what proportion of “cases” are found above 28CT then we cannot accurately determine “infection rates”.

        6) Any media outlet reporting “infection rates” are: at best spreading misinformation based on lack of data and understanding; and at worst culpable in the fleecing of the Canadian people in a concerted effort to foster medical apartheid.

        • nobody

          Since you claim to be trained in the sciences, could you tell us which of the sciences? I thought it was your partner with the phd in one of the sciences.
          As a purported scientist you should know that claims of knowledge should be supported by references.
          Please provide links to WHO reports, and CDC reports, that support your claim of a recommended Cycle Threshold of 28 or less.
          Please provide links to reports that support your claim that Canada is testing to a CT of 40.
          Please provide some corroborating citations to support your other claims.
          All I see is someone who vacillates between between Farcebook “nothing burger” quotes, can’t remember there’s a shift key, claims the government doesn’t share information, has access to primary literature and “Raw data”, has a partner with a Phd, is trained in the sciences themselves, and other subtexts.
          I suspect that you have a degree in “cut and paste” from Farcebook, and understand very little of what you do put in your posts. But that’s just me, I’m cynical.
          No end of preachers have told me that “God loves us”, but does he really?
          Ontario has fared reasonably well of late in the Pandemic.

          Alberta is the cautionary tale from which the rest of Canada has benefited. Restrictions were relaxed too early there. The Pandemic was declared over and needlessly people got sick, and died. Thankfully the rest of Canada can now help Alberta

          because we prefer to err, if at all, on the side of caution.

          Please get vaccinated. The sooner You Do the sooner we can all get back to a semblance of normal.

          • Drake Larsen

            November 2020 publication in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Bullard et al reported that “patients could not be contagious with Ct >25.”

            New data-heavy, peer-reviewed paper from June 2021 then offers the full spectrum of the information needed to for you to disentangle your misconceptions, see;
            https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/11/e921/5912603

            Here, Jaafear et al. test with qPCR nearly 4000 positive cases along with nearly 2000 SARS-CoV-2 isolates, as well as negative standards. See figure 1 where negative standards start to blow up with positives above 23CT and by 28CT we exceed 50% false outcome. Positive first week samples are optimized at 22CT and all correlations take a nose dive beyond ~ 26CT.

            Harder to report on Ontario’s cycle threshold rates, because unlike every other free country Doc Tam is keeping those numbers under wraps. We know from early on before the veil of secrecy was imposed that Canadian labs were running between 36 and 45.

          • Drake Larsen

            If you truly wish (I doubt it) to follow the protocols from the WHO it’s a bit harder to copy and paste because the news comes as piecemeal addendums to their original 11 September 2020 document. The document from 13 Jan 2021 updates PCR rates as discussed in this thread. The living document is cataloged as: WHO/2019-nCoV/laboratory/2020.6

            In it you’ll find: “…as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases. This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases.”

            In layman’s terms: The “better safe than sorry” approach you/nobody promotes is highly problematic, full of false positives, and has been leveraged to sew unnecessary fear.

    • BLC1

      “Fear” has nothing to do with it. Sensible actions based on available data is why the human race has survived and prospered. Your posts show your fear of being inconvenienced and your arrogance in assuming your cherry picked “facts” are somehow more accurate and offer a wiser option than that of highly trained professionals the world over . Quit with the case rate/infection rate/CT rate desperate grab to prove to yourself that you are smarter than everyone else.

      • Drake Larsen

        We’ve literally taken a data rich quantitative tool (qPCR) and utilized it improperly as a data poor (yes/no) qualitative tool… your argument that we are using “available data” shows you don’t know what you are talking about re the data at play.