1. This deserves a bit of explanation. Toronto Public Health has a long history of managing the contact tracing of communicable disease. It has deep principles informing that work and has evolved a set of practices to reflect those principles. https://twitter.com/gordperks/status/1308168152036016128

2. When the staff find out about a case, they trace the movements of the individual. They contact the administrators/owners of places where there could have been spread. They work together to contact people who might have been exposed.

3. Deep care is taken not to do this in a way that reveals the identities of individuals. Your medical information is absolutely private and protected.

4. In most cases the public doesn’t learn where spread happened. There are two exceptions. When there is a real possibility of spread, and there is no way to identify who might have have been exposed, a public notice can be issued urging people who were present to contact TPH.

5. The other case has been a feature of managing COVID. Most public institutions have been publicizing outbreaks. (Schools for example.) Care is still taken to not release this information in a way that reveals individual medical information.

6. The hole this leaves is private locations such as workplaces and business are not being reported to the same extent as public locations. This could be distorting the public perception of risk.

7. After a lot of careful thought and discussion members of the Board of Health (lead by @joe_cressy ) asked the Medical Officer of Health to consider publicizing outbreaks at private locations. In law the decision to release the information rests with her alone.

8. The pandemic is unlike any other disease outbreak any of us have ever known. All of us are potential victims, and the outbreak will last over a long period of time. The public right to know cannot be overstated. There are crucial personal and social decisions to be made.

9. There are two other public policy considerations. If we knew more about business-related outbreaks it could effect how we think about making paid sick days mandatory, and how we regulate employers to protect workers and customers. - end