Your weekly COVID-19 update

Every Tuesday, the Maclean's daily newsletter will catch you up on what you need to know about Canada's fight against the coronavirus. This week, Patricia Treble focuses on one story worth watching, and you can get a sneak peek here. You'll also get the same mix of Maclean's stories you expect every day if you scroll down below.

As case counts fall in Canada’s hotspots, more provinces are starting to reopen their economies, even though the levels of new infections as well as the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital remain high. Dr. Michael Warner, an intensive care doctor in Ontario, tweeted his concern: “To be clear. The ICU curve has not bent. We peaked at 420 on Jan 15, dropped to 354 patients on Feb 3…and are now up to 377. non-COVID care is being rationed. Surgeons are triaging their patients. RNs/RTs/MDs are running out of gas.” Many experts are worried that the spread of the new variants combined with relaxed rules regarding social activities will result in a third wave . Colin Furness, an infectious diseases experts at the University of Toronto, thinks that a new surge is “inevitable.”

On Monday, British Columbia announced another 1,236 cases for the past three days. And while the province’s per capita number of new cases keeps falling, the rate of that decline has been relatively slow compared to other provinces in the West. As of Monday, its rate of new cases is 85.6 per million population, just a smidge below that of Alberta, which is adding 89 cases per million population, on a 14-day rolling average. If Alberta’s caseload continues to fall at its current pace, its per capita rate should drop below that of British Columbia in the coming week, which would mark the first time that’s happened since March 2020.

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