Island Health discontinues its COVID-19 dashboard

Island Health discontinues its COVID-19 dashboard
CHEK
Island Health will no longer be updating its COVID-19 public dashboard.

Island Health will no longer be updating its COVID-19 public dashboard.

The dashboard, which contains information about new cases, case exposures, total cases and active case and provides a breakdown of active cases by north, central and south island, has not been updated since Christmas Eve.

Island Health confirmed to CHEK News in a statement Wednesday that the dashboard is being discontinued for a variety of reasons.

“With the roll-out of rapid testing and the evolution of case and contact management to prioritize high risk populations, active case information broken down by Health Service Delivery Area within Island Health is no longer reflective of the population as a whole, given that detailed information such as symptom onset, end of isolation and exposure information is no longer collected for all cases. For these reasons, Island Health has discontinued its COVID-19 dashboard,” the statement reads.

The health authority also said that “much of the information” contained in their COVID-19 dashboard is now reported on the BCCDC’s COVID-19 Regional Surveillance Dashboard website.

However, daily active case information by north, central, and south regions on Vancouver Island does not appear anywhere on the website.

The Island Health dashboard first appeared in 2020 and has undergone changes over the months. The first dashboard only showed total cases for north, central and south Vancouver Island but newer versions showed more information.

At the time of its discontinuation, it was the only data source to provide certain information at a more localized level. However, data about new cases, total cases and total active cases for the Island Health region were often wildly different from the figures provided by the Ministry of Health, which is the same figure that appears on the BCCDC’s dashboard. For example, the Dec. 24 last update showed 352 fewer active cases than what was reported that day by the Ministry of Health.

Meanwhile, in its statement to CHEK News, Island Health said it “continues to report all relevant case information” to the BCCDC.

An old version of the Island Health COVID-19 public dashboard.

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Nicholas PescodNicholas Pescod

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