What is the COVID-19 data for Delta? It is a question that many in the community, including local politicians would like an answer on.
During Thursday’s virtual town hall session involving Mayor George Harvie, Delta North MLA Ravi Khalon and Delta MP Carla Qualtrough, the question was posed again.
Khalon said the data that comes from the provincial health authority is not getting broken down by community specifically and it’s a policy that the Centre for Disease Control has.
“If there is an outbreak at a seniors’ facility for example, that will be made public because it is important for family and workers and others to know there is an issue at that site,” said Khalon. “So Dr. Henry and Minister Dix every time they give an update provide that information, but they don’t provide that information by city partly because we need to all act like it is in our city. I know that some people think it would be nice to know and then maybe we can relax, but we need everyone to do the important things around physical distancing and we all need to work together.
“Here in B.C. people are taking the appropriate steps to practice social distancing to keep themselves and our community safe, so hats off to everyone watching today.”
Harvie reiterated that council, at its May 11 meeting, passed a motion to send a letter to Premier John Horgan asking that all city-specific numbers, including Delta, be released.
“When you look at the Washington State website they have broken it down into very specific cities,” said Harvie. “I would sure love to have something to tell people who don’t think that this is real. Here’s the facts.”
Qualtrough added that COVID-19 is not stopped by a policy, it is stopped by people.
“One of the things this pandemic – this crisis has highlighted is the antiquated nature of the way we share data between jurisdictions, the challenges of our privacy laws, well very important, are also antiquated and there is a lot of hiccups in the system to seamlessly share data,” she said. “We want to make sure we respect people’s privacy of course, but we also need the facts and Delta needs the facts, but it is not always that simple to say here are the numbers. There are laws, three levels of government so I think this gives us a chance to take a look at how we share data amongst jurisdictions and how we look at amending or updating our privacy laws.”
