Chatham-Kent's top medical official is justifying a decision to keep the public in the dark about five individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 at local nursing homes.
Dr. David Colby, the medical officer of health for Chatham-Kent, recently told Blackburn News that a total of five residents or staff members tested positive for the virus sometime during the spring -- however, the public was not notified of the results.
Colby said the tests were conducted after the province expanded testing in April for all residents and staff at Ontario's long-term care homes.
Dr. Colby said he made the decision to withhold the information from the public because the individuals were asymptomatic and, in his clinical opinion, they were likely false positives.
"We did not issue press releases on them because we were damn sure they weren't cases, but we did take precautions to isolate them," he told Blackburn News. "The public didn't need to be notified."
According to Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, the definition of a "confirmed case" of COVID-19 is someone who has tested positive by way of a nasal swab test known as a nucleic acid amplification test. Further testing is not required for the ministry to confirm a positive case of COVID-19.
While the five tests at local nursing homes were all eventually proven to be false positives, the initial information about the positive results was still kept from the public for 24 to 48 hours while the followup tests were conducted.
"We found five people that tested positive and [after] retesting, they were all false positives. There were no true positives in long-term care in Chatham-Kent," said Dr. Colby. "The people that tested positive were in a sea of negatives, all around them, all of their contacts, [and] everybody that they're in contact with was negative."
At this time in Ontario during the pandemic, the Ministry of Health guidelines required that an outbreak be declared at a long-term care home if one or more residents or staff members had a positive case of COVID-19.
While Colby did not disclose which CK nursing homes had a staff member or resident test positive, the long-term care homes in the municipality have yet to declare a COVID-19 outbreak.
When asked why the information was not made public, Dr. Colby said it has since been reported to the Ministry of Health and it is in the public domain.
While the general public was not notified, the family members of those who tested positive were informed and the necessary quarantine measures were put into place. However, the family members of other healthy residents at the affected homes were not made aware.
"This has to be interpreted and confirmed by an appropriate medical authority, which in this case happens to be me. There's no withholding of anything relevant here. There was no risk to the public, there was no risk to the people [at the homes]. All precautions were taken," he said. "I didn't believe there was anything to report."
Colby equated informing the public of these positive COVID-19 tests as "crying wolf" and called it unethical.
Colby did acknowledge those precautions were taken in the event he was wrong about the five cases. He said the information would have created a "community panic."
"I don't think the public would have been served by notifying them of something that I believed to be a false alarm," he said. "It does warrant precautions in case I'm wrong, but it doesn't warrant [public] notification. That's my position and it always will be."
The province has reported that 1,846 residents at long-term care homes in Ontario have died after contracting COVID-19 since the pandemic began in March. A total of eight long-term care staff members in Ontario have also lost their lives due to the virus.
As of Friday evening, there were 93 active COVID-19 cases within Chatham-Kent. Chatham-Kent Public Health also reported the municipality’s second death related to COVID-19 early last week.
