Kingsville councillor asks WECHU to provide transparent data

KINGSVILLE — Councillor Kim DeJong made a motion at Monday’s Kingsville Council meeting to request that the Windsor Essex County Health Unit begin disclosure of more detailed data regarding COVID-19.

DeJong’s motion called for the area’s positive cases to be broken down in more detail regarding close contacts, agri-farm, long term care, travel, hot zones and outbreaks.

After reviewing other regions such as Durham, Hamilton, Peel and Toronto, it was noted that those areas provide an interactive website which allows the public to look directly into neighbourhoods.

DeJong believes that the municipalities in this region should have that information at their fingertips to better manage municipal services.

The public needs to be able to see the data trending over time within the areas of the municipality.

“We don’t know where the community spread is coming from,” she said. “Do we open our beaches? Our splashpads?”

She believes that the current method of publishing a basic pie chart of percentages within all of Windsor-Essex, does not provide enough information for the public or the municipalities to make decisions based on possible outbreaks and cases within their community.

“There are cases attributed to Leamington and Kingsville farm workers, but some of them live in Windsor,” she said. “We need to know where they live.”

DeJong’s motion was to send a letter to Dr. Wajid Ahmed, Medical Officer of Health for Windsor-Essex, to request a similar information method be set up as in those other regions.

Council voted unanimously to pass the motion and will send the letter to the WECHU, local MPPs and the other municipalities in the region.