At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, retired teacher Lois Armstrong said local health officials where she lives in Kingston, Ont., provided daily updates about outbreaks, cases and deaths in the community.
Now, Armstrong, 68, said the public is being asked to take a bigger role in managing their risk but information from health authorities is less available than before. Data such as the location of outbreaks, meanwhile, is no longer made public, she added.
"There's no question that people are being provided less data," said Tara Moriarty, a University of Toronto professor in the faculty of dentistry who studies infectious diseases. "It's particularly critical because people have been made responsible for how they handle the pandemic and the decisions they make."
While wastewater testing has become a way to track the evolution of the pandemic, Moriarty said, it's only being done in large cities in some provinces. Jean-Paul Soucy, a PhD student at the University of Toronto who studies infectious disease epidemiology, said some provinces, like Nova Scotia, have stopped reporting region-specific data, which he said makes it difficult for residents to manage their own risk.
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