Omicron variant of COVID-19 confirmed in Halton and Durham regions cases, while cases have also been reported in Peel Region – Ontario, and Ottawa, which is now the Canadian epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ontario currently has 10,312 cases and 2,933 hospitalizations have been reported.
The Ontario Health Coalition, which tracks the cases of COVID with the provincial health authority, says there are two other provinces, Quebec and New Brunswick, also reporting cases of the virus.
But now the global data about the spread of COVID-19, and how long it’s taking for each case to be confirmed, may be available thanks in part to a Google search made by a couple students in a U.S. college.
Google, who also said they don’t know much about the virus, said on Twitter, “We’ve received a request for a report from another US school. We’re working with them to get the report to the appropriate people.”
The students who used Google’s search tool, they said, could find out whether it would take longer for a case to be confirmed at a hospital in their neighbourhood than at a hospital on the other side of the country.
“If this is being reported in other countries, we want to know,” one of the students, Alex Schieffelin, said. “You can help the health of everyone.”
Google said it was in contact with the school and, “[The report’s] been passed on to school officials and the appropriate parties.”
Schieffelin had his own question: “Will the hospital on the other side of the country have the same amount of people because COVID-19 can spread to other people in a hospital, or do we have like one person in that hospital with COVID and the rest of the hospital is unaffected, or people still coming but in a very different way because of the virus?”
He also wanted to know how long it would take to be confirmed in his neighbourhood, and how many people had died.
In the end, he was not able to find out how long it would take for a case to be
