PUBLIC NEEDS MORE INFO ON COVID CASES: GARDNER
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
HUNTSVILLE — The health unit’s top doc blames the province for the lack of transparency around local COVID-19 cases.
“I agree and I’ve made the case to the province,” said Dr. Charles Gardner.
Responding to complaints from reporters yesterday — in a news briefing now reduced to once a week — he said he’d like to say more but can’t.
While he respects the need for personal privacy, he agrees with media requests for more reporting on where those tested live and where they may have come in contact with the cause of the pandemic.
And he agrees it leaves people in the dark about important information that jeopardizes people health and prevents more positive outcomes of the pandemic.
Citing the most recent “cluster of cases” in Huntsville, he said it’s helping contribute to “incomplete data.”
When people are tested, they use their Ontario health card that links them to their home address and their local health unit.
It’s not until that information is passed on to the health unit where the person may have come in contact with COVID-19 that the local investigation and reporting takes place locally.
So, if a tourist or cottager from Toronto gets tested in Muskoka, it may take days or a week or more to come to light where that person came down with it.
And that concerns Gardner, who admitted to reporters online that there may be truth to worrisome studies that claim the real number of corona cases is tenfold.
The most recent case in Gravenhurst is an example. The unidentified male is said to be between the wide range of ages of 18 to 34.
SMHD provided no other details yesterday when Gardner was speaking.
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