Horgan, Dix deny holding back data
Public trust at risk, hardest-hit areas need full story on COVID-19, critics say
Premier John Horgan and Health Minister Adrian Dix denied that the province is withholding COVID -19 data from the public, even as public health officials promised to start releasing neighbourhood-specific information on infections and vaccinations starting this week.
During question period Monday, B.C. Liberal leader Shirley Bond said that only publishing a fraction of data collected by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control is “disrespectful and harmful” to communities hit hardest by the virus, such as Whalley and Newton in northeastern Surrey. B.C. Green party leader Sonia Furstenau said the government is jeopardizing public trust by not providing them unfiltered COVID data.
“By failing to keep the public fully informed, the government fails to keep the public fully engaged,” Furstenau said. “Substantial data can help promote safe behaviour.”
Horgan said provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and the BCCDC have for 15 months been releasing daily information about the transmission of the virus in each of the five health authorities, hospitalization rates, and the impact of the virus on pregnant people. He said more information is now available on immunizations because the province is doing more immunizations than at any point during the pandemic.
“From the beginning of the pandemic, we made a decision on this side of the house to allow public health officials to speak directly to British Columbians with the information they needed to keep themselves safe. That approach has served us very, very well,” Horgan said, citing the more than two million British Columbians who have received their first dose of the vaccine.
Health Minister Dix said the information in the 45 pages of BCCDC documents leaked to Postmedia last week are routinely shared with “more than 100 people who are involved in developing the public health response” in COVID-19 hot spots such as Surrey.
Starting Wednesday, the BCCDC will release more detailed COVID-19 surveillance data on infection rates, variants of concern and vaccination rates broken down by community health service area, information which was contained in the report leaked last week. However, Henry said community health service area information won't be released in smaller, rural communities where detailed data could reveal people's private health information.
The province is working on an interactive map so people can look at neighbourhood data broken down by age and gender. It will be released in the “coming days,” Henry said on Monday.
Some are calling for the release of data that the province doesn't have, Henry said, such as COVID-19 data broken down by race or ethnicity, or detailed breakdowns of the number of transmissions in workplaces, schools or daycares.
“We don't have the type of information that I think everybody would like to have, which is exactly who transmitted to whom in every school and every daycare,” she said.
“Unfortunately, our surveillance data is limited in both those areas.”
During question period, Dix said the government has made a “political decision” to support public health officers, implying that anyone asking for more data isn't supportive of health officials.
“I think the provincial health officer is very committed to the idea of informing the public and, in fact, has done so from the beginning of the pandemic through extraordinary efforts,” he said.
Epidemiologists, data scientists and community advocates have said B.C. lags behind other provinces when it comes to releasing COVID -19 data that could be used to better inform public health measures and vaccination campaigns.
Ontario and Alberta, for example, regularly release neighbourhood-specific figures on daily COVID rates, variant cases, active cases and vaccination rates.
Toronto Public Health also releases COVID-19 figures based on race and ethnicity, which has shown that Black communities have been disproportionately infected with the virus.
Quebec releases industry-specific COVID -19 figures that show the rate of infection spread in certain occupations and detailed information on infections in schools.
Dr. Baldev Sanghera, a Burnaby family physician who is also part of the South Asian COVID Task Force, said more transparent release of COVID -19 data would help physicians and advocates respond to evidence of areas where COVID transmission is spreading or where vaccine uptake is low.
For example, the BCCDC figures show that parts of northwest Surrey, including Whalley and Newton, had an average of 40 COVID-19 cases a day for every 100,000 people, more than double the rate of most other areas of Metro Vancouver.
Despite this, those neighbourhoods, plus Guildford, had a lower vaccination rate.