Ahead of the usual cold and flu season, Lambton Public Health (LPH) has updated its website to include a new Seasonal Infectious Diseases Bulletin.
Epidemiologist Siobhan Churchill said the user-friendly resource provides weekly updates on respiratory and enteric disease activity, including COVID-19 and influenza.
She said many other public health units across Ontario are moving toward providing a comprehensive report for their communities.
"One thing we really like about this new bulletin is that it's interactive," said Churchill. "We encourage the public to explore the data. Throughout the report, users can use filters to view historical data and compare the local rates to the province. This context is important when interpreting the data. If people have questions, there is a contact email address in the report header and we're happy to answer questions, help with interpretation and hear people's thoughts on the bulletin."
Churchill said information will be provided about hospitalizations, fatalities, and active outbreaks in institutions including long-term care homes.
"We expect to be updating this report throughout the respiratory season this year," she said. "As to whether that continues in the summer, when we see respiratory virus activity typically fall off, we're not sure yet."
Churchill said the bulletin pulls in data from seven reliable databases from different sectors.
"That includes public health labs, hospitals and public health investigation databases, so it's all coming directly from the source. On the home page of the report, the main indicator is the seasonal respiratory virus activity level," she said. "For example, that one comes from the ACES (Acute Care Enhanced Surveillance) viral respiratory mapper which is a provincial tool that looks at the percentage of emergency department visits each week that are for respiratory visits. It then grades it from 'seasonal' to 'high' based on the level. The data source for the outbreaks page is our LPH system where we're monitoring active outbreaks in active institutions."
Churchill said the information for the COVID-19 page comes from the LPH databases, like their case and contact management system and it also refers to provincial tools.
Residents can view LPH's Seasonal Infectious Diseases Bulletin by visiting the health unit's website.
