Modelling group stymied by B.C. data issues as experts warn of COVID-19 hospital crunch

As a growing number of British Columbians are hospitalized with COVID-19, the stream of pandemic data from the government has dried up to the point that some of the most trusted analysts in the province say they'll need to largely give up their work.

As a growing number of British Columbians are hospitalized with COVID-19, the stream of pandemic data from the government has dried up to the point that some of the most trusted analysts in the province say they'll need to largely give up their work.

The B.C. COVID-19 modelling group, comprised of professors from UBC and SFU as well as independent data scientists, mathematicians and other experts, has served a watchdog role by scrutinizing government policies and their impact on the pandemic’s trajectory, as well as warning the public about possible issues. Now, they say they can no longer do that work properly. 

“Definitions have changed and aren't really comparable through time, the data we get is quite out of date at this point since we only get it on a weekly interval, and even then it's revisionary,” explained one of the group’s data scientists, Jens Von Bermann. “Given all the lags, it's hard to do anything useful, and I think at this point … we just can't do predictions anymore for B.C. We'll still try to look at what we can say about where we're at broadly."

Earlier this month the provincial government announced it would no longer provide daily COVID-19 data, moving to weekly disclosure instead. CTV News has heard from frontline health-care workers, public health experts and scientists frustrated at a “need to know” approach to public information they describe as paternalistic and geared at controlling the message to the public. 

The NDP government has faced repeated criticism in this vein from the start of the pandemic, with other provinces making much more information available to the public months earlier than in B.C., where disclosure sometimes happened only after information leaks.

HOSPITAL WARNING SIGNS NOT OBVIOUS ANYMORE

One of the most vocal critics of the government’s response to the pandemic pointed out the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has grown to levels on par with the Delta wave, but the public is largely unaware.