Dozens dead, hundreds infected, but health authorities fight to conceal B.C. hospital outbreak findings
CTV
A CTV News investigation into COVID-19 outbreaks in hospitals in the Lower Mainland has resulted in scant information from health authorities, which have fought disclosure even though hundreds of patients and staff have contracted the virus in hospital and dozens have died as a result.
A CTV News investigation into COVID-19 outbreaks in hospitals in the Lower Mainland has resulted in scant information from health authorities, which have fought disclosure even though hundreds of patients and staff have contracted the virus in hospital and dozens have died as a result.
For months, multiple attempts to obtain information and documentation around investigations, responses and fallout from COVID-19 outbreaks in Lower Mainland hospitals have been met with stonewalling, redactions and insistence that no such documentation exists, even though lives were lost.
Fraser Health fought a months-long battle with a freedom of information request, ultimately resulting in 79 pages of written documentation, of which 55 pages’ worth were redacted. Every page is marked “Confidential,” and some say “Confidential Do Not Distribute.”
Meanwhile, a Vancouver Coastal Health privacy officer insisted that – despite the deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks taking place in that health authority – there was “no documentation” to provide under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act. A public health officer for VCH pointed out the BCCDC does not require them to produce a report.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner may ultimately decide on whether a semantic decision about what constitutes a “report” should’ve been produced under the Information and Privacy Act, which compels public bodies to produce information. The possibility that there is no paperwork would raise other issues around documenting viral transmission and mitigation efforts in lethal outbreaks during a pandemic.
Fraser Health cited three sections of the act in redacting the large swathes of information: s. 22, pertaining to personal information of staff and patients, but also s. 13, “information that would reveal advice or recommendations developed by or for a public body or a minister,” and s. 17, “disclosure harmful to the financial or economic interests of a public body.”
CTV News filed a freedom of information request after a Fraser Health communications staffer directed us to obtain the information that way, while Vancouver Coastal Health’s communications department never provided the information, despite several requests.
