Update source of data for Ontario

[jeanpaulrsoucy]

We have two options for generating case time series data for Ontario:

1. Status of COVID-19 cases in Ontario by Public Health Unit (PHU)

   • A time series consisting of cumulative snapshots of the individual case dataset (below) from each particular day---does not generally allow for historical corrections
   • Most recent date is today's date
   • Same time series being used for death data (which can only be calculated in this way)

2. Confirmed positive cases of COVID19 in Ontario

   • Individual case data that can be aggregated up to a daily time series---this allows for historical corrections
   • The most recent date is yesterday's date
   • Massive file size (> 300 MB)

For AB, we are using the individual case time series approach. This allows filling in earlier dates in the time series since it is only updated once per week. This is not an issue for Ontario since both datasets are still updated daily.

[jeanpaulrsoucy]

It seems that despite datasets being updated only once per week now, the historical time series for the "Status of cases by PHU" timeset get filled in with each weekly update. Were this not the case, we would be forced to transition to using the "Confirmed positive cases" dataset.

[jeanpaulrsoucy]

With the apparent retirement of the health region datasets from the Ontario MoH, it has become necessary to switch to the PHO Ontario COVID-19 Data Tool. A benefit of this transition is that data from the PHO dataset go all the way back to January 2020 (as opposed to the MoH data, which went back to April 1, with the CCODWG dataset filling the gap before this).