Premier Doug Ford’s government is scrapping Ontario’s program for sampling wastewater to monitor the level of COVID-19 in the population.

The program measures how much of the virus that causes COVID-19 is circulating around the province and is run by a dozen universities and research sites, through funding from the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.

In a statement, a provincial official said the move will “avoid duplication” with a federal program.

“The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance across Canada and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario,” said Environment Ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler in an email to CBC News.

“Ontario is working to support this expansion while winding down the provincial wastewater surveillance initiative,” he said.

Public health officials are criticizing the move as short-sighted.

  • BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca
    OP
    71·
    24 days ago

    I have immune issues, yeah.

    But even outside of that, long COVID is a real threat. Not to mention they also tracked RSV and the flu as well. A new more virulent variant could pop up and it would be great to have that tracked, there’s also the bird flu etc. Hospitals considered it actionable data as well to plan staffing around severity of Flu/RSV season as well.

    If there was just one good thing that came out of the pandemic this was it IMO (should have been remote work, but apparently the Feds would rather sacrifice the health of their workforce and the planet to prop up OC Transpo, and businesses who refuse to adapt).