LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Review of decisions made on COVID-19

There have been serious concerns raised in recent articles in the Windsor Star highlighting communication and decision-making issues relating to the pandemic between Windsor Essex County Health Unit and Windsor Regional Hospital.

More recently, that also included the mayor of Leamington.

Residents of Windsor and Essex County are left wondering whether decisions have been made for our safety or if decisions were influenced by other motivations.

The recent explosion of new COVID-19 cases within the local migrant worker population seems to highlight yet another missed opportunity.

At the same time,

COVID -19 has been a novel situation with information that is incomplete and often inaccurate.

As a member of the medical community, we are faced with understanding emerging data and trying to make evidence-based decisions.

But when there is not enough information we have to be intuitive and open to all the information available from multiple sources or jurisdictions — such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), studies from various research or educational institutions and other credible sources.

Recently, there was a petition circulating calling for the removal of our local public health officer, Dr. Wajid Ahmed.

Perhaps a more useful exercise would be a neutral third-party review of all the local public health and medical decisions against the timelines of this pandemic with the objective of “lessons learned” for either the next phase of COVID-19 or future pandemics, health crises or disasters.

Dr. Albert Ng, Windsor