News Release: COVID-19 Case Reporting Process Updated on Monday

For Immediate Release
Friday, January 21, 2022 | 6:15 p.m. | Windsor and Essex County

Dashboard Changes are in Response to Provincial Testing Eligibility

On Monday afternoon, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) will update the information reported on their COVID-19 Local Data webpage [1], in response to recent changes in COVID-19 testing eligibility. As announced in late December, the Ontario government has made significant changes to the eligibility for publicly funded Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing [2], in order to ensure testing is available for individuals who work in or attend highest risk settings.

Publicly funded PCR testing is now limited to symptomatic high-risk individuals, and individuals who work in high-risk settings. This change came into effect on December 31, 2021 and as a result, positive cases confirmed by PCR testing is an underestimate of the true number of individuals with COVID-19 in the community. To address this, the WECHU is implementing the following changes to the COVID-19 Local Data webpage [1]: 

• Reporting of cases limited to 'high-risk cases', and only active and new cases.
• Reporting of confirmed and suspect COVID-19 hospitalizations.
• Reporting of local wastewater surveillance data.
• Reporting of new outbreaks is limited to high-risk settings such as long-term care homes, retirement homes, hospitals, and congregate living settings.
• Inclusion of historical outbreaks across all settings beginning from September 1, 2020. Outbreaks prior to September 1, 2020 will be added after a thorough review.
• Differentiating between data from before and after the change in testing eligibility on all existing graphs for testing and cases over time, as the time periods are not comparable.
• Discontinued reporting any Variants of Concern (as Omicron is the dominant variant, and only a small number of PCR tests will be screened for Omicron).
• Discontinued reporting cases by age, source of acquisition, geography, and status of vaccinations, as high-risk cases only represent a segment of the population.
• Discontinued reporting of daily effective reproduction number and case doubling-time related to COVID-19.

Going forward, the COVID-19 website and email updates will be shared at 12:00 noon on weekdays. On Thursday, January 27, 2022, the WECHU will provide an overview of the new and updated information found on the dashboard to the media at 8:30 a.m.

 For the most up to date information on COVID-19, visit https://www.wechu.org/ [3] or www.Ontario.ca/coronavirus [4].