As COVID-19 cases in Ontario’s general population hit an all-time, increasing 24% in two weeks from October 13, 2020 to October 28, 2020, the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) released its most recent outbreaks report for non-health care settings. Based on the report, the OHC is raising questions about the goal of Ontario’s COVID response and plans for sectors seeing increases far above the general population’s. People must be given full information to make safer choices, the OHC said.
According to the OHC clear data on how the virus is being transmitted amongst the general population is still not available. Peel, with the highest rate of case positivity (6.5% of people tested are testing positive) did not contact trace 16.9% of the cases in the last week of October. In the same period, the proportions of COVID-positive cases that have not been contact traced in other “hot spots” are: Toronto 65%; Durham 27.5%; Ottawa 48.8%, according to an OHC statement.
However the OHC says that even with insufficient reporting in almost all public health units, it was able to find that several industries are far surpassing the growth in cases among the general public during the two-week period ending October 28. For instance, cases in schools have grown the most significantly, increasing 67.76% in two weeks while general community spread increased 24% in those same two weeks. Retail outbreaks, on the other hand, have continued to grow at a rate of 27.97% in this reporting period and outbreaks public services have also grown at a rate of 26.34% in this report. Developmental services have also seen a significant increase, growing 21.26% in two weeks.
While the Ontario government is reporting all cases in schools on their website, they are only classifying 233 cases out of 2,001 cases (11.6% of school cases) as being a part of an outbreak, the OHC says. The government has adopted a different definition of “outbreak” in schools, requiring a known epi-link, which means proven, direct contact or exposure between cases. But students and teachers share washrooms, playgrounds, buses, gyms, locker spaces and other common areas. The bottom line is that growth in the numbers of cases in schools is far higher than in the general public, there is no explanation for this in the Public Health data, and there is no way to verify the quality and thoroughness of contact tracing that is being done in schools. But the much higher growth in school COVID-positive case numbers should raise questions about what is happening, the OHC pointed out.
There appears to be no plan to improve public information and data about where transmission is occurring, to provide resources for contact tracing in Toronto and other hot spots, or to require the release of information about outbreaks in workplaces, the OHC statement added.
The OHC says that even with its best efforts at tracking, it was only able to find a small portion of cases in workplace outbreaks by name of the facility, because only Hamilton Public Health is reporting all local workplace outbreaks. Ottawa and York are reporting congregate care (Developmental Homes and Social Services), Windsor-Essex and Chatham Kent are reporting agriculture cases and Toronto is not reporting any workplace outbreaks at all outside of schools, long-term care, retirement homes and homeless shelters.
The OHC report is available at https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/report-tracking-of-covid-19-outbreaks-in-non-health-care-settings-data-updated-to-october-28/.
