Patrick Brown, mayor of Brampton, Ont., says there are reasons for “cautious optimism” given the low hospitalization rates and severe cases in his city despite the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Brown said the Brampton Civic Hospital, the only hospital in his city, had reported only 20 people hospitalized for COVID-19 at that time, with just two people in the intensive care unit (ICU). Brown also said that half the patients included in the hospital’s daily counts for COVID-19 aren’t actually admitted there for the virus in the first place. “Of the 20 COVID-19 patients, half of them went in for COVID, but what is interesting is half of COVID-19 patients being counted as COVID-19 patients came in for another health-care issue and inadvertently found out that they had COVID, which speaks to the fact that COVID is so well spread in the community …