Year-long battle for COVID-19 hospital outbreak information in Vancouver
CTV
A year-long tug-of-war has resulted in Vancouver Coastal Health producing some of the COVID-19 outbreak reports it repeatedly insisted did not exist.
A year-long tug-of-war that included two freedom of information requests and a review from B.C.’s privacy watchdog has resulted in Vancouver Coastal Health producing some of the COVID-19 outbreak reports it repeatedly insisted did not exist.
Dozens of emails and recent conversations with bureaucrats involved resulted in finger-pointing suggesting internal confusion, obfuscation and a “need to know” attitude that has even health authority personnel confused and contradicting each other as to who’s responsible for what information gathered during a pandemic – if it’s even documented at all.
Staff at Vancouver Coastal Health’s privacy office claim that after repeated and extensive internal discussions and searches that didn’t result in any hospital outbreak documents, they were surprised that subsequent searches and prompting from CTV News produced material titled “COVID-19 Outbreak Reports” at Health Emergency Management BC, a government health agency that typically handles coordination for medical services during disasters.
“Is the health authority just phoning it in?” asked Freedom of Information and Privacy Association Executive Director, Jason Woywada. “They don't want to create the record so they're calling it in to HEMBC so they create the record and you're left making a request and being handed back and forth between the two because both are able to say they don't control the information.”
CTV News made multiple attempts to speak with a senior VCH medical health officer about how hospital outbreaks are handled and who holds the information, but the health authority stopped replying to emails and didn’t send a written statement either.
Hundreds of British Columbians have died and many more have fallen ill from COVID-19 infections likely acquired from hospitals, and though they’re no longer announced, outbreaks and transmission continue in the province’s acute care facilities where staff absentee rates remain high.
On May 28, 2021, CTV News asked Vancouver Coastal Health for outbreak reports in their acute care facilities to analyze the strategies public health was using to try and curb hospital-acquired infections and get insight into whether recurring mistakes or new issues were driving infections.
