A recent cyberattack at the local hospital has delayed the launch of a new online reporting system for respiratory illness activity in Chatham-Kent.
During a Board of Health meeting on Thursday, Chatham-Kent Public Health said plans to roll out weekly respiratory surveillance bulletins have been put on hold until next week as the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance works to restore its technology systems following a ransomware attack on October 23.
Laura Zettler, an epidemiologist with Chatham-Kent Public Health, said the health unit was intending to launch the weekly reports on November 3, but officials are now aiming to begin on Friday, November 10.
“With the cyberattack situation at the hospital, some of the data and some of the indicators that we’re looking at, particularly around overall levels of respiratory activity, are really defined according to the number of respiratory-related [emergency department] visits we see coming into our local hospitals,” she said.
The recent cyberattack has impacted the hospital’s access to Wi-Fi, email, and patient information systems.
If the hospital’s systems are not restored before the end of next week, Zettler said the data released may not be a complete picture of overall respiratory illness activity in CK.
However, once the system is up and running, the seasonal respiratory surveillance bulletins will be posted every Friday from November to April.
The bulletins will highlight the current levels of respiratory virus activity based on local trends in hospitals, influenza and COVID-19 case counts, positivity percentages, and respiratory illness outbreaks in local long-term care, retirement and hospital facilities.
“[Nursing homes], other facilities, and members of the general public as well will be able to see our current list of institutional outbreaks that are active and ongoing,” said Zettler. “It really combines a lot of the information we used to report about COVID on our COVID dashboard that we stopped reporting on back in May.”