With COVID-19 on the rise in Alberta, what constitutes a fourth wave in a nation filled with vaccines? – CTV
July 28, 2021
TORONTO — The R-value has climbed to peak COVID-19 levels in Alberta, even as daily case numbers remain fairly low, prompting the question: What constitutes a fourth wave of the pandemic in a country that has enough vaccines to inoculate everyone?
The R-value of COVID-19, or the “effective reproduction number,” is a way of measuring an infectious disease’s capacity to spread. It represents the number of people who will become infected by one infected person.
Alberta’s value was logged around 1.48 over the weekend according to provincial data, whereas at the peak of the third wave of the pandemic in the province when daily cases were around 1,500, the R-value fluctuated around 1.15.
