'We're clearly in a wave': Ontario's COVID-19 wastewater signal is more than double what it was at this time last year

COVID-19 viral activity in Ontario as measured by the province’s wastewater signal is now more than double what it was at this time last year and health officials are raising concerns about what could be a challenging few weeks heading into the holidays.

COVID-19 viral activity in Ontario as measured by the province’s wastewater signal is now more than double what it was at this time last year and health officials are raising concerns about what could be a challenging few weeks heading into the holidays.

The latest data, released on Thursday afternoon, shows that Ontario’s wastewater signal now stands at 2.1, up from 2.04 at this time last week.

It was 0.98 on the same day in 2022.

The data, maintained by Public Health Ontario, suggests that this is the highest wastewater signal the province has recorded in more than a year. However, a similar dataset maintained by the now defunct Ontario Science Advisory Table shows that the number hasn’t actually been this high for at least two years.

“There's a real consistency about what's happened now — that we're clearly in a wave that started towards the end of the summer, early fall,” Dr. Fahad Razak, an internist at St. Michael’s Hospital and the former scientific director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Table, told CP24.com in an interview this week. “There was a hope that it had started to plateau by late September, early October. But in fact, unfortunately, it's gone the other direction and continues to rise quite steeply.”’

While the provincewide wastewater signal currently stands at 2.1, the number varies across different regions.

In the GTA, the growth in viral activity has been less pronounced with the number now standing at 1.68 compared to 1.09 one year ago.