Inadequate data reporting hampers pandemic fight

OTTAWA — A clear picture of the fight against COVID-19 is being hampered by lack of consistent data about the virus across the country, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said Wednesday.

But the problem of sharing such data among provinces was flagged four years ago in a report commissioned by the nation’s top public health officers.

Failure to put in place a mechanism for data surveillance across the country would have negative consequences for people’s health, said the 2016 report.

Despite that report inadequate data sharing information has been a problem during the COVID-19 crisis, Tam admitted Wednesday.

“Data is extremely important obviously to any outbreak,” she said. “There’s obviously some gaps particularly in reporting to the national level that we do have to address.”

The 2016 report was commissioned by the Pan Canadian Public Health Care Network, a group designed to coordinate the work of the nation’s top public health officers. It flagged that Canada’s public health surveillance system was inadequate, with inconsistent data sharing between provinces, a lack of common standards and gaps that could hamper a response to a virus like COVID-19.

The network’s report was a blueprint for how to create a more unified system for public health, one where all provinces looked for similar problems and collected data in a similar way. It found provinces collected data differently and didn’t have consistent standards when it came to monitoring for disease outbreaks.

“The lack of a mechanism to align surveillance standards across Canada is a missing pillar of surveillance infrastructure that holds the potential to delay the early detection of outbreaks and is a barrier to better understanding chronic diseases and injuries, resulting in negative consequences for the health of Canadians,” reads the report.

Since the outbreak began, not only have Canadian provinces counted their COVID19 data in different ways, they have also switched their methodologies during the outbreak.

While some provinces use fully electronic systems to report new cases and trace the contacts of people who are infected, it has been revealed that others still use fax machines to report the information.

The network’s report found data sharing was done on an ad hoc basis with informal agreements, but no consistent rules. Tam said that has been a barrier during this crisis and policy makers at all levels are trying to address it.