Who has been vaccinated against COVID in Hamilton?

Questions of transparency are being raised as no breakdown of the 20,658 COVID vaccine doses administered in Hamilton has been made public.

Hamilton public health officials, as well as those at the provincial level, have been consistently poor when it comes to disclosing important pandemic information," said Arthur Schafer, founding director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. It matters because when governments are unable or unwilling to provide data on how they are distributing scarce health resources, they seriously impede public involvement and prevent informed ethical debate."

Medical officer of health, Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, has blamed the province for being unable to provide breakdowns such as how many doses were given out in long-term care (LTC) and high-risk retirement homes, which are supposed to be the priority.

The Ministry of Health said it would provide comprehensive reports" detailing the vaccinations, including categories such as residents, staff, and essential caregivers of seniors' homes.

The Spectator asked Hamilton public health repeatedly if it had received the reports and was told on Jan. 28, Feb. 1 and Feb. 4 by spokesperson Jacqueline Durlov the department didn't have the breakdown and didn't know when it would become available.

In fact, public health received the information on Jan. 27 but doesn't plan to make it public until end of day Feb. 10.

It was only after the ministry told The Spectator it sent the information in January that public health acknowledged it had the data.

The information that was provided to us by the Ministry on Jan 27th was not presented in a way that was usable for us to extract the data accurately," Durlov said in a statement Feb. 8. Hence we did not have available, accurate data to share."

The statement goes on to say: Providing information to the community in an accurate and transparent way is very important to us. It is important that we ensure that we only provide data once we are confident that it is accurate."

It's not clear why the data was not usable as the ministry said in a statement Feb. 5 the records contained information about the breakdowns of groups receiving COVID-19 vaccinations."

The statement also said the province's data comes from those administering the doses locally.

It raises further questions about why the provincial report is needed, how long it's taking to make public and how an effective rollout can take place without the breakdowns.

The critical gap in the data could be deadly," said Dr. Amit Arya, assistant professor in palliative care at McMaster University. If we don't know what we're dealing with then it's hard to come up with a co-ordinated and targeted response."

He says public health should be able to say how many are vaccinated in each home - let alone city-wide - especially considering vaccine uptake is known to be historically low among staff in some places.

We can't have so much variability when we have this deadly virus circulating around and the staff ... bring it in unknowingly," he said.

Transparency has been an issue in LTC throughout the pandemic, said Arya.

It's directly related to public accountability," said Arya. If information is made available at regular intervals and it's based on verified data, then that's how we are going to have ongoing improvement."

Schafer says, Secrecy and concealment promote public distrust and public cynicism. Without transparency there can be little trust."

Joanna Frketich is a Hamilton-based reporter covering health for The Spectator. Reach her via email: jfrketich@thespec.com