BC Silently Reveals Lost Covid Cases After FOIA Discrepancy

It started in late August 2021 when this author began soliciting media representatives from the BC Department of Health and the Public Health Authority Service for information on Covid testing practices in BC hospitals. This led to a possible request for access to information at the beginning of December of the same year. After some disagreement, just before the start of the new year, BC’s official pandemic update included a disclaimer that exposed another hidden bias in publicly reported Covid case data – patients who could no longer be tracked. (1-3)

Remember, the dates in British Columbia were, and still are, too good to be true. Draconian scientists in Ontario on the side of vaccination advocates even became aware of it when internal memos from Vancouver Coastal Health leaked to the press in September. (4) However, this internal information was dropped into their laps two weeks after I sent multiple phone calls and emails to various media representatives, executives, and agencies of the BC Department of Health and Hospitals. Likewise, my initial request for information on Covid recording and testing practices in hospitals was on behalf of the CLN.

Bonnie Henry stands with BC Secretary of Health Adrian Dix. Photo courtesy of BC Gov News.

Non-infectious cases under lock and key

Along with an apology from Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry, a mysterious cohort of Covid cases in British Columbia’s health care system, usually kept private, has been publicly reported for the first time. It did not do so until after the existence of these cases, labeled as broken isolations, was revealed to the press in September. (5) Patients can be removed from isolation if their symptoms have subsided after five days of diagnostic Covid infection. Despite the lack of infection, these non-infectious patients can remain in hospital with poor care due to long-term side effects.

According to a special BC Gov press release released in September, the number of non-infectious patients increased by almost 50%. The 330 patients reported with Covid in BC hospitals were closer to 482 across the spectrum of private and public statistics the discontinued isolations would soon be reported regularly. (1) Although it was not yet known at the time that Covid patients had lost follow-up care. (2)

How many Covid patients in “abandoned isolation” in British Columbia hospitals were either unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, and fully vaccinated on September 21, 2021?

This information will soon be made available weekly and we will then share it.

Marielle Tounsi – Senior Public Affairs Officer – COVID-19 Media Relations – Ministry of Health. 09/24/2021.

Vaccinated patients may still test positive due to the viral load, but with mild symptoms. For this reason, vaccinated people who end up in hospital with Covid-19 are more likely to have abandoned isolation compared to unvaccinated patients. But that’s just a hypothesis, since three months have passed and broken isolations with or without associated vaccination status remain private. As it turns out, however, these records may not exist.

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), known in British Columbia as the Access of Information Request, was sent to get data on records that were never published. The application included the vaccination status of abandoned isolation cases throughout 2021. (3)

The ministry found no records as they have no patient-level records that would allow them to link abandoned isolation cases on a given day to their vaccination status.

FOI Response – Justice / Health Team, Information Access Operations – Ministry of Citizen Services. 12/22/2021.
Broken isolations and lost Covid cases are not public data.

Lost to pursue Covid cases from the horse’s mouth

A week after a follow-up with the Department of Citizen Services, the official Covid cases were posted on the BC government website as they have been for what appears to be forever. But there was a new line of text; a disclaimer. Broken isolations were finally mentioned again as an exclusion in this new note. Additionally, the disclaimer revealed a second bias hidden in the statistics. (2)

Note: Active cases exclude those who died, dropped out of isolation, or were lost in follow-up.

BC Gov News – December 30th, 2021.

Outside of this standard and routine BC government press release dated December 30, 2021, there are no other lost case reports in public records that are directly related to official Covid case updates. However, this information is known to clinical scientists as a variable and a limitation in scientific studies. For example, there have been large numbers of follow-up losses in disjoint clinical trials in various research communities due to the loss of patients and subjects after the onset of the pandemic. However, the December 30th release of BC Gov News marks the first recognition of a bias for tracking Covid cases on the public register.

Does the bias in the official records harm national integrity?

This means that government agencies have chosen to go against science and instead hide limitations and potentially uncontrolled biases in official statistics and keep these details secret. Furthermore, it appears that these restrictions will not be revealed until enough people send the correct FOIA and access requests. Or at least, restrictions are only disclosed after formal inquiries from multiple journalists reveal sufficient discrepancies in governing bodies’ plans.

We don’t know how many of the patients who have Covid but have lost follow-up care have been vaccinated or not. If vaccinated patients should be lost in the official hospital data after the follow-up care, it would appear, by mistake, to be predominantly unvaccinated Covid patients occupying the hospital wards. The same applies to broken insulation; Remember, the vaccine will keep symptoms low without clearing the viral load. So what started in August 2021 continues into the New Year as this author continues to send FOIA requests for better scope information that the BC Department of Health is hiding from the public.

If we put all of the private and public records together, how many vaccinated, Covid-positive patients do you think there are in BC hospitals? Let us know in the comments if you think science supports keeping non-infectious cases and other restrictions as a provincial secret.

Author’s Note: A new request has been made for abandoned isolation data targeting specific weeks rather than days with or without vaccination status. In addition, the percentage or number of cases lost was queried during follow-up examinations in the same weeks (or days). Stay tuned for an update, these things take time.

sources

  1. Marielle Tounsi, Covid Communications, BC Department of Health. 09/24/2021.
  2. BC government news. Update on the COVID-19 pandemic. 12/30/2021.
  3. FOIA Response, BC Department of Citizen Services. 12/22/2021.
  4. Secrecy of the true number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in BC. CTV news. 09/21/2021.
  5. BC government news. How BC counts its daily COVID-19 cases in hospitals. 09/24/2021.

Cover photo by @PennyDaflos courtesy of Twitter.

Footnote (s)

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