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OTTAWA — At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, retired teacher Lois Armstrong said local health officials where she lives in Kingston, Ont., provided daily updates about outbreaks, cases and deaths in the community. 

Now, the 68-year-old said people are being asked to take a bigger role in managing their risk but information from health authorities is less available than before. Data such as the location of outbreaks is no longer made public, she added.

"I think it's very difficult for the average person to assess their own risk," Armstrong said Monday in an interview. "Kingston is one of the hot spots of Ontario, but they still are only posting the information three times a week, and you can't go get tested unless you're really high risk or really sick. So there's no way of knowing."

As public health measures have lifted across the country, several indicators of COVID-19 are rising all across sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, driven by the highly contagious sub-lineage of the Omicron variant known as BA.2.

Hospitalizations are also on the rise, chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said Tuesday.

That makes the risk assessment fairly simple right now, she said.

"All across sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, doesn't matter where you are, it's very likely that Omicron variant, the BA. 2 sub-lineage, is spreading quite widely in your community. So doesn't matter where you are in sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ right now," Tam said, advising everyone to get vaccinated, wear a mask and improve ventilation to limit the spread. 

Tam said it's important now that people keep up to date with their vaccinations.

On Tuesday, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization strengthened a number of recommendations, suggesting all adults between the age of 18 and 49 should get a first booster shot. 

NACI also says that kids aged 12 to 17 should get a booster if they're immunocompromised or have other risk factors, and that other kids in that age group may be offered a third shot as well. 

Tam agrees, though, that public access to information about where the virus is spreading and who it is impacting needs to improve so people can make informed decisions.

"We need to continuously provide some of the epidemiologic information that we know about," she said. 

Provincial governments are telling Canadians to estimate their own sense of risk but those same governments are reducing the amount of data available, residents say.

"There's no question that people are being provided less data," said Tara Moriarty, a University of Toronto professor in the faculty of dentistry who studies infectious diseases. "It's particularly critical because people have been made responsible for how they handle the pandemic and the decisions they make."

Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador are the only provinces that report daily COVID-19 data, she said in an interview Monday, adding that sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ does less COVID-19 testing per capita than other wealthy countries.

For the week ending April 9, an average of 1.46 COVID-19 tests were conducted per 1,000 people every day in sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, according to Our World In Data, a global data website affiliated with Oxford University. In Austria, by contrast, 40.5 tests were conducted per 1,000 people. Greece, Italy, the United Kingdom, France and South Korea, were doing three times as many daily tests per capita as sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½. The website counts both PCR and antigen test results that are made public.

Tam said the number of tests performed per capita are increasing as the epidemic curve grows. 

While wastewater testing has become a way to track the evolution of the pandemic, Moriarty said, it's only being done in large cities in some provinces.

It's not just an issue of data, she said, but also of communication. Government leaders, she explained, need to do a better job of communicating what the current situation is and who might be most at risk.

"You need to give people information so they can make better risk assessments and so that they can modify their behaviour accordingly," she said. "If you withhold that information, or, by omission, just don't provide it, you're limiting the ability of people to act on that information."

Jean-Paul Soucy, a PhD student at the University of Toronto who studies infectious disease epidemiology, said some provinces, like Nova Scotia, have stopped reporting region-specific data, which he said makes it difficult for residents to manage their own risk.

"COVID is not just one big outbreak in a country, it's 1,000 little epidemics that are local," he said in an interview Monday. "So the more local your information is, the more tailored your decision-making can be. Health care is local. If you need an ICU bed and there's one free in Kenora, that's not going to be too helpful if you're in Toronto."

Soucy said he takes more precautions when the COVID-19 situation worsens and participates in riskier activities when the situation improves. 

"An important component of public health is building trust," he said. "And I think transparency builds trust."

Even though many provinces have lifted mandates for masks in certain settings, Tam said people should still wear them any time they are indoors with people they don't live with, given the high levels of transmission all across the country. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 12, 2022.

Jacob Serebrin and Laura Osman, The Canadian Press