Lockdown on facts a hindrance

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2020 (1768 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Why don’t we know more about Manitoba’s first COVID-19 death?

Last week, Manitoba Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin refused to tell us anything about the 60-something woman who passed away after being treated in a hospital intensive care unit. This included a blackout on all details of how, when and where she may have contracted the virus, and whether she could have passed it on to anyone else.

The Free Press confirmed Sunday the woman, Margaret Sader, worked at a Winnipeg dental supply company. However, even with that information, many of the details surrounding her case remain very much in the dark. As do the reasons for keeping additional information out of the public realm.

To date, Roussin has not even offered an explanation for his silence. That is a maddening scenario as we descend ever deeper into this public health crisis. But if Roussin has anything going for him, it is that he is far from alone in keeping a tight lid on the details of individual cases.

Across the globe, as scientists and public health officials debate the nature of the virus and what to do about it, there is a parallel debate about how much information should be released about who has the virus, how they contracted it, where they live and work and who else may have been exposed.

A lack of information in a pandemic can lead to tragic results. Epidemiologists believe one of the main reasons China could not contain the virus when it emerged was because of a concerted effort to conceal its existence that denied the general public the information they needed to protect themselves.

Pro-information advocates will also point to places like South Korea, where an unprecedented collection and publication of information about those who have tested positive has helped dramatically slow the rate of infection.

If South Korea is at one end of the transparency spectrum, then countries like Canada are at the other.

No one is denying the existence of the virus. In fact, the measures taken to stop people from gathering in large numbers — measures that have essentially brought the economy to a halt — prove public-health officials are being frank about the risk. However, on many other matters of disclosure, they have taken a decidedly minimalist approach. We can get real-time numbers on confirmed infections and tests performed but there are almost no other details. There are exceptions.

British Columbia public health officials released a lot of information about an outbreak in the Lynn Valley Care home in North Vancouver, the site of the country’s first confirmed COVID-19 death. The identity of the victim, a man in his 80s, was not released. But B.C. did disclose concerns about the conditions in the care centre — including a lack of staff and general lack of cleanliness — that no doubt contributed to the outbreak.

Beyond those isolated examples, we are getting so few details, it makes you wonder if public health officials aren’t reporting the information because they don’t have it.

The who, how, where and when of this virus comes from intensive contact tracing and investigation. This is where public health officials identify the source of an infection and how many other people may have been infected. It’s a labourious process that requires nurses with specialized public-health training to perform. So specialized, it turns out, we don’t have enough of them.

Last week, Shared Health, Manitoba’s central organizing agency for health care, outlined plans to add 35 support staff to work with public health nurses on contact tracing. However, Manitoba Health and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority have deflected numerous attempts to identify the total number of public-health nurses who are doing frontline contact investigations. One health-care official admitted last week they don’t actually know the exact number of people involved.

No one should be surprised or concerned the public-health system is still ramping up functions like contact investigation. There is no way any province could afford to employ on a regular basis the number of public-health nurses needed to do contact investigations in a pandemic. Unprecedented public-health threats require public-health officials to move urgently to acquire the supplies and people necessary to meet the challenge.

Although we have mobilized enormous levels of material and human resources, the system is clearly overwhelmed. And in many instances, the main casualties have been basic transparency and information.

Roussin and Lanette Siragusa of Shared Health do a daily briefing for journalists and issue bulletins — sometimes twice a day — on new confirmed or presumed infections. Notwithstanding his refusal to provide more details about infections or deaths, Roussin is pretty transparent. But elsewhere, the system has not been as responsive.

Since COVID-19 formally arrived in Manitoba, there have been stories about people having to wait up to a week to get negative results. To address this backlog, last week the province confirmed it had hired a private lab solely to contact people who had tested negative. That’s a pretty good indication the failure to provide information was linked to capacity, and not policy.

Although it’s not essential to know the identity of the woman who died, we do need much more information about how she got it and whether others were put at risk. And if we’re not getting that information because the province is still ramping up its information gathering and management functions, then we need to be told that.

So, when Dr. Roussin says he won’t tell us more about the woman who died, he may be telling us he doesn’t have all the information, yet. If he does, he ought to share with all of us, as soon as possible.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca