At the height of the 5th wave of COVID-19, several governments, including Quebec, restricted access to PCR diagnostic tests. As a result, authorities and researchers lost a valuable source of information on the spread of the virus. How can we continue to monitor the epidemic without this indicator of the number of cases in the population?

In this context, 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),  Ingrid Peignier (CIRANO) and Alexandre Pud'Homme (Université de Montréal and CIRANO) have been conducting since January 13, 2022, a weekly exploratory study to assess the incidence of COVID-19 in Quebec.

In this report presented on Radio-Canada's Découverte program, Roxane explained the different methods used in this CIRANO study to estimate the number of cases of COVID-19 in Quebec each week and recalled the importance of monitoring the number of cases in order to evaluate the virulence of the epidemic.