In a first since the beginning of the pandemic, Canada now has more new COVID-19 cases per capita than the U.S.
Over the last seven days, there have been about 22 new recorded cases per 100,000 people in the country.
A graph from Our World in Data, which collects global COVID-19 statistics from Johns Hopkins University, shows that on Friday, April 9, Canada overtook the U.S. The trend continued through April 12, which was the last time the data was updated.
Ontario has been hit the hardest with hospitals being increasingly overwhelmed, especially in Toronto. On Monday, the province announced its hospitals would start ramping down elective surgeries and non-urgent procedures to ensure they have the capacity to treat more COVID-19 patients.
Ontario also reported 4,456 new COVID-19 cases in the province on Sunday, marking a new single-day high for new infections. On Tuesday, the test positivity rate logged by labs topped 10 percent for the first time and total admissions to hospitals and intensive care units soared to a new pandemic high—according to the Ministry of Health, there are 1,822 people with COVID-19 in Ontario’s hospitals, with 626 of those being treated in ICUs for COVID-related illnesses and 422 requiring a ventilator.
“This is the worst moment of the pandemic thus far,” Kevin Smith, Chief Executive Officer of the University Health Network, told Bloomberg in an interview Monday. “Our ICUs are full.”
Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its site suggesting Americans avoid traveling to Canada due to a high number of COVID-19 cases, even if they’re fully vaccinated. The page also listed Canada as Level Four, the highest possible risk level.
Japan recently announced it would tighten border controls on travelers from “the Canadian province of Ontario” due to the spread of new virus variants there.
Experts believe the differences in vaccine rollouts in both countries, as well as the spread of more transmissible variants in Canada, explain the shifting situations, according to CBC News.
As of Monday, 36 percent of Americans had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 19 percent of Canadians, according to Our World in Data.
