It’s not clear whether Nova Scotians will continue to be able to see and get weekly COVID-19 updates after the end of this month.
A single line on the May 26 weekly media release on numbers of deaths, cases and hospitalizations said “the public dashboard will continue to be updated through the end of June.”
On Friday, the Department of Health and Wellness wasn’t saying whether that meant the dashboard will be shut down.
In an email, spokesperson Khalehla Perrault said the department’s response is that “the public dashboard will continue to be updated through June and will be reassessed closer to the end of the month. The public will be informed of any decisions made about ending the COVID-19 dashboard.”
Asked why an assessment is being done to begin with, and whether the province will continue to provide a weekly media release with statistics or if that is also being reassessed, she didn’t have an answer from the department.
“Public Health watches the epidemiological data very closely. Any concerning trends will be communicated and responded to appropriately to protect the health of all Nova Scotians,” she said. “This is true for all communicable diseases, not just COVID-19. We are still refining our process and you should expect to see this evolve over time.”
The line from the May 26 weekly COVID-19 media release.
The province averaged more than 200 new lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 and one death per day in the last week, and more than five new hospitalizations daily.
NDP Health and Wellness critic Susan Leblanc said Monday morning that Nova Scotian should be able to see and receive regular updates on the status of the virus in the province until it’s no longer a concern.
“Tim Houston has been saying for months now that the people of Nova Scotia have the information they need to protect themselves, but if we don’t have those numbers I feel like that’s actually not true,” Leblanc said. “I don’t understand why they would move at this point to eliminate that information.”
She said with more than 1,000 new cases a week, many deaths and hospitals under pressure because of the number of cases, “it doesn’t seem like the right time.”
Chief medical officer of health Dr. Robert Strang has said Nova Scotians will have to live with COVID-19, Leblanc said, “and I agree with that as well, but living with it means we need to have the proper information. We have to be able to make decisions. If there are 1,000 cases, I know I have to be super-careful in my life and make decisions based on the case counts.”
She said she doesn’t want to guess why a decision would be made to stop providing information.
“There may be some good reasons, but share those with Nova Scotians. If it’s really necessary for some reason that we don’t understand, we on the outside, then explain it to us. Transparency is the key in all of this.”
Leblanc said she keeps hearing people comment that COVID is a thing of the past, “and it always catches me off guard, because COVID is not a thing of the past. We are living with right now. Our family has its first case right now… It’s still around us, it’s not a thing of the past.”
The next weekly COVID-19 update is expected to happen Thursday.
