The CBC’s Mike Crawley has broken the news that hundreds of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the GTA were not flagged to public health officials because of a mixup between two hospitals. The blunder may well have contributed to a large spread of the infection. The positive tests were completed as far back as April but the 12 public health units involved were only notified about the oversight in the past few days. The bulk of the cases involve people living in Toronto, Peel Region and York Region. The mistake means thousands of contacts of the confirmed cases were not traced by public health workers, potentially contributing to wider spread of the coronavirus in recent weeks.
I thought that was your job
The tests were conducted by the William Osler Health System, which has hospital sites in Etobicoke and Brampton, as well as a drive-through COVID-19 assessment centre. The test samples were processed by the laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto. Staff at each hospital thought that notifying the public health units about the approximately 700 positive tests was the responsibility of the other hospital, according to a source informed about the mixup. The actual responsibility lay with William Osler, said provincial officials.
This is a huge problem says specialist
CP24 Tuesday quotes infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch as saying the error could be responsible for many new cases of the virus in the GTA. “This is a huge problem,” he said. “No one would be surprised (if) between April and maybe perhaps a week ago, this is responsible for a lot of the cases in those affected areas.” Bogoch said communication between labs, public health agencies, and patients is “key” to help slow the spread of the virus. “If someone is positive, you’ve got to know that they are positive right away and follow up with the contact tracing of all of those people that were in contact with the positive case,” he said.
