Manitobans know how to stay safe in absence of COVID data: health minister

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OTTAWA — Manitobans sick with COVID-19 must look after themselves, Health Minister Audrey Gordon said Friday, as the Public Health Agency of Canada ceased pandemic forecasting for the province because the PC government curtailed case reporting.

“If you’re sick, stay home and look after yourselves and your family, all Manitobans,” Gordon said at a morning news conference with Pharmacists Manitoba on the topic of smoking cessation.

Gordon said people are familiar with the fundamentals after two years of living with COVID-19 and must continue to protect themselves in the absence of government mask and vaccine mandates or fulsome data reporting related to case numbers and hospitalizations.

“Even before any data was available, we were saying to Manitobans if you’re immunocompromised, social distance, wear a mask, consider the social gatherings you’re part of,” Gordon said.

“The recommendations are still very strong and they’re sound,” she continued. “They remain the same. If you feel ill, don’t go to work, don’t go to a personal care home, don’t show up in a hospital, wash your hands, cover your cough.”

On Friday, Dr. Theresa Tam, the country’s chief public health officer, presented national modelling that suggests a resurgence in the coronavirus. So far, she said, there hasn’t been the explosive growth that has driven a sixth wave in parts of Europe due to the emergence of the more contagious BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron strain.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan were left out of Friday’s modelling, which involved anticipated hospitalizations and projected case counts. The two provinces had been included in projections as recently as Feb. 18.

Federal officials have published modelling on national trends, including breakdowns of the six most populous provinces, including Manitoba, for months.

Tam expressed concern about provinces scaling back the data they register and publish.

“I’d be really disappointed if we went backwards and let go of the actual gains that we made during this pandemic,” Tam said in response to questions from the Free Press on Friday.

Gordon said public health officials decide which data the province will share with federal officials. She refused to comment on the absence of federal modelling for Manitoba.

“I’m not familiar with what they’ve sent in the past or what they’ve decided not to send at this time,” she said

However, pandemic data available to provincial officials and her office continues to indicate a downward trend in viral activity, she insisted.

“If public health deems that we may be in the midst of another wave, we will hear about that,” she said.

On Friday afternoon, a government spokesperson said there have been no changes to how Manitoba shares COVID-19 data with PHAC and said public health staff were trying to understand why the province was excluded from the forecast.

Similarly, Monday was the last day that the federal agency’s daily epidemiology update included Manitoba’s case rate; the province went blank in the Tuesday update. As of Friday, seven of the 14 provincial, territorial and Indigenous jurisdictions stopped reporting case rates to Ottawa.

Tam has said that Canada is moving toward a COVID-19 monitoring system similar to the way it handles influenza: it issues weekly reports based on testing of hospital patients to track strains, their severity and the effectiveness of vaccines.

Tam said it’s up to provincial officials to decide how much testing they do.

“I will be encouraging provinces and territories to continue to sustain that infrastructure, as well as offering tests to their populations,” she said. “Jurisdictions are adjusting to what is a good sampling size and distribution, in terms of trends analysis.”

In addition to shifting to weekly data reporting, Manitoba has changed the definition of what constitutes a COVID-19 death and what is considered an outbreak in a school or personal care home.

The change was made because the the Omicron variant is extremely contagious and produces less-severe outcomes, provincial officials have argued, though epidemiologists say this makes it tricky to compare spread over time.

Tam expressed a specific concern about recent changes to death data in Manitoba.

“Mortality surveillance is very important, and I personally think that in the Canadian context, we need to do better,” she said.

It can take months to learn both the confirmed number of COVID-19 deaths in a province, as well as “excess” deaths (those that exceed normal patterns) that help uncover the mortality rate of coronavirus strains, and which populations are most at risk.

“We live with imperfections and with some variability in how we report, because we have to be more timely,” Tam said.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca