Three years after the epidemic began, Quebec is relaxing its surveillance. The Ministry of Health and Social Services will no longer issue a daily report from March 2020.
From Thursday, we will stop disseminating the Covid-19 dashboard, which provides daily data on the virus. “This decision was taken in the context of Quebec’s current return to a global approach to managing infectious diseases,” pointed out Marie-Claude Lagasse, the ministry’s media relations coordinator.
“As the evolution of the situation related to COVID is stable, we are also noticing a decrease in interest in daily or routine monitoring of the situation,” said Ms.me Laccas. Detailed data is still regularly available on government websites.
In addition, the Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec (INSPQ) will significantly reduce the detection program for COVID-19 in wastewater.
The cities of Saguenay, Saint-Georges, Trois-Rivières, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Val-d’Or, Joliette and Drummondville were excluded from the plan on March 22. The cities of Laval, Rimouski and Sept-Îles were withdrawn on Wednesday.
Starting April 12, only data for the cities of Montreal, Quebec, Gatineau and Sherbrooke will continue to be updated.
A slight decrease in COVID-19
The end of the daily reviews comes as the data becomes difficult to interpret and sometimes seems contradictory. For example, on Wednesday, Quebec detected 439 new cases through PCR testing, bringing the daily average to 367. Additionally, an average of fifty people report a positive result from the rapid test each day. Thus the trend has eased slightly in recent weeks.
However, by consulting the studies conducted by INSPQ or data on the concentration of COVID-19 in sewage of major cities, we get a completely different picture. Sounds trigger nearly 21,000 new cases a day. The trend has been on the rise recently, with 15,000 cases per day reported last week. Wastewater data points to an upward trend in recent weeks.
In hospitals, on the other hand, the situation continued to ease. The latest report released Wednesday showed 1,144 hospitalized people tested positive for COVID-19, a 7% drop in a week. Of these, 391 patients were admitted to the hospital directly because of their Covid-19 infection, while others were admitted for other reasons.
Quebec recorded five additional deaths on Wednesday, bringing the daily seven-day average to five. The trend has been relatively stable since the beginning of the year.
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