The BC Liberals are calling on the NDP Government to increase transparency around the reporting of COVID-19 cases, especially in schools, long-term care facilities, and hospitals.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Education Critic Jackie Tegart – the MLA for Fraser-Nicola – says people deserve to have access to clear, consistent and easy to understand data so they can make informed decisions based on the risk of the COVID-19.

“When people have gaps in information others fill it in. We’ve got some parents on facebook who are filling in the gaps around school exposures,” she said. “Why isn’t the government doing that in a timely way? It is important to our communities.”

“People are doing the best they possibly can to try and make sure that the information is timely and correct, but it is the government’s job to do that. You know, like, we should be able to go and find that information very easily in a timely way.”

The Liberals call for better transparency were outlined in a letter from Tegart and Health Critic Renee Merrifield sent to Health Minister Adrian Dix.

“Although there has been some progress in recent weeks, the B.C. government remains far behind other jurisdictions in providing frequent, granular data to the public, and it is having negative impacts on British Columbians,” Merrifield, the MLA for Kelowna-Mission said.

The mayor of Revelstoke, Gary Sulz, previously told NL News that getting specific information played a big part in residents of his community cutting off a cluster of COVID-19 cases.

In addition to releasing data on the number of cases in the province’s 89 local health regions on a monthly basis, the province has been putting out weekly data on the number of new cases in the area on the BC CDC website.

“There is still stigma associated with this disease, and we have heard from many people that it is a challenging time for them and that they don’t always always get support from their communities, when they’ve been identified as having COVID-19,” Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry said, back in December, when that data was first released.

After public pressure, the government also began releasing COVID-19 deaths and cases in long-term care and assisted living facilities earlier this month, after it stopped doing so in October citing IT concerns. The province says it is also committed to releasing this data once a week.

Tegart says the Liberals want five specific categories of data to be released:

• daily data on the number of vaccinations delivered and administered in each health authority;
• daily data on the number of rapid tests delivered and administered in each health authority;
• daily case breakdowns in schools (by staff or student populations), long-term care homes and assisted living facilities (by resident or staff), and health care facilities (identified by doctors/nurses or health-care workers);
• daily breakdown of total public and private COVID-19 tests performed; and
• race-based COVID-19 data.