The Risks of Killing a COVID Early Warning System via @TheTyee "In Ontario, the government is rolling back its detection program. Doctors are speaking out about what’s at stake. 1/
"COVID-19 is surging in parts of North America and Europe, and even played a role in ending the presidential campaign of 81-year-old Joe Biden, who was infected for the 3rd time last month. Nevertheless, on Wednesday the Ontario government shut down its early warning system. 2/
"Doctors, citizens and researchers are calling the decision to kill the province’s wastewater disease surveillance program both wrong-headed and dangerous. Ending the program will make it harder to track and thwart viral outbreaks,... 3/
"..and thereby increase the burden on Ontario’s understaffed hospitals, which experienced more than 1,000 emergency room closures last year. “Pandemics do not end because science has been muzzled,” Dr. Iris Gorfinkel, a well-known Toronto physician and clinical researcher.." 4/
"In emails to politicians, more than 5,000 citizens have demanded restoration of the program, with little effect. "wastewater surveillance is relatively cheap... It also provides reliable updates that decision-makers and the public could easily follow in real time. 5/
"The monitoring helped millions at high risk from COVID infections, including the elderly and citizens with cancer and other immune suppressive disorders, to determine the incidence of the virus in their communities. 6/
"For many Indigenous communities with substandard and crowded housing, the program also served as an early warning system for waves of respiratory diseases. "The program also provided timely warnings to parents on the risk of infants acquiring RSV, which can cause pneumonia. 7/
"Hospitals, too, regularly used the results to prepare for staffing and resource challenges in the wake of infectious viral waves including COVID and RSV. 8/
"The program, for example, currently shows COVID surging to record levels in the eastern parts of the province. Even a mild COVID infection can result in significant health problems three years down the road. 9/
"But in June the Doug Ford government announced it was axing the $15-million program to avoid duplication with a federal program... "In fact, the federal program is far more limited than the cancelled provincial effort. 10/
Read full article in @thetyee here: 11/
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They asked us to make personal decisions about risk based on the data then lied about the risk and removed the data.
— tern (@1goodtern) October 9, 2022