11 February 2022

Study to assess the incidence of COVID-19 in Quebec - Updated with data from the week of February 3 to 8, 2022

CIRANO has published an update of its exploratory study to estimate the incidence of COVID-19 cases in Quebec. This update integrates the data from the fourth week of collection, which took place from February 3 to 8, 2022, with a sample of 3000 respondents representative of the Quebec population and compares them to other collection weeks.

It should be noted that this study is spread over five consecutive weeks in order to monitor the evolution of the situation. The study uses both a direct sampling strategy and an indirect sampling estimation based on the network scale-up (NSS) method. Details of the methods are available in the CIRANO 2022s-03 working paper.

 

→ Update 4th week of collection (February 3 to 8, 2022)

Highlights: 
 The number of adults newly infected with COVID-19 based on PCR, rapid tests, or self-diagnosis over the past 7 days is 216,815 (30,974 cases per day) based on our direct sampling estimate. Excluding self-diagnosis, we instead obtain 132,304 cases over the past seven days, or an average of 18,901 cases per day.
By the network scale-up (NSS) method, we obtain estimates consistent with the direct sampling strategy, for the total population, of 162,586 new cases for the week under consideration (23,227 cases per day) using the estimator of Habecker et al. (2015) and 171,975 cases (24,568 cases per day) with the estimator of Killworth et al.
The data collected at time 4 still show a decrease with the direct method, but it is marginally statistically significant. Estimates using the network scale-up (NSS) don't show a significant decline. Instead, the two RPA-based estimators indicate a plateau from a statistical perspective. We will have to wait until week 5 to see if there is a trend reversal.

 

This study is conducted by a team of researchers composed of David Boisclair (HEC Montréal), Roxane Borgès Da Silva (Université de Montréal and CIRANO), Vincent Boucher (Université Laval) Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin (Polytechnique Montréal and CIRANO), Pierre-Carl Michaud (HEC and CIRANO) and Ingrid Peignier (CIRANO)