Toronto Public Health has built its own coronavirus data-tracking system, saying it needed a more “nimble” public health database than Ontario’s “outdated and clunky” province-wide system.

Toronto’s secure internal database, launched Thursday with provincial approval and called Coronavirus Rapid Entry System (CORES), was developed over the past eight weeks, primarily by City of Toronto technology staff.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s public health chief, told reporters CORES will speed up her department’s efforts to trace people who came into contact with infected Torontonians, and yield better data on the local spread of COVID-19 to share with the public.

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The “nimble” new system will also track test results, hospitalizations and deaths, she said. It will upload information to the Ontario health ministry’s Integrated Public Health Information System (iPHS) local public health agencies have been required to use to report infectious disease information since 2005.

The new database will also allow more of Toronto’s front-line staff to work from home, Toronto Public Health said in a news release.

“Previously, TPH was inputting our case and contact-tracing data into the provincial integrated public health information system, also known as iPHIS, which all local public health departments are required to use to report infectious disease information,” the release states.

“This system has served TPH well during routine public health work. However, it is not equipped to deal with a health emergency of this magnitude and the scale and speed of data-entry required to provide up-to-date data.”

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TPH chair Coun. Joe Cressy said Toronto started working on CORES as soon as the scale of the global pandemic, and the limitations of Ontario’s 15-year-old system, still used by the other 33 public health units, became apparent.

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“To be frank the (provincial) system, we found, was outdated and clunky and not as effective as is necessary right now,” Cressy said in an interview.

“The time it took to input and update information was onerous and slow. The data reports that could be pulled from it, that help guide and inform our response, were not as comprehensive as needed.

“The central tenet of infectious disease prevention during a pandemic is adequate testing, followed by rigrous contact tracing.

“Our tracing work was severely restricted by an outdated data management system.”

Premier Doug Ford’s government was supportive of Toronto’s decision to develop its own system to feed better data back to the provincial system, said Cressy, who added that Toronto has kept other cities abreast of its work on CORES.

Cressy said he expects Ottawa will follow Toronto’s lead and launch its own data-tracking system soon. Ottawa officials could not be reached for comment Thursday evening.

Also Thursday, Brian Beamish, Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, wrote to public health agencies reminding them of their requirement to be forthcoming with the public about COVID-19’s spread.

Agencies should provide “as much information as is necessary to protect public health, without naming individuals,” Beamish wrote.

The data could include number of cases, approximate age and gender as well as geographic locations of infected or deceased individuals, including those in long-term care facilities.

De Villa , who on Tuesday suggested people seek infection data directly from long-term care homes, said Thursday she agrees with Beamish, and CORES will allow her department to give more COVID-19 data to Torontonians.

But public health officials must balance disclosure, she said, with a need to give ill Torontonians, and the family of deceased people, “the space to recover.”

TPH reported that, as of early Thursday afternoon, Toronto had 2,881 confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases including 230 people hospitalized, 88 of them in intensive care.

The virus has claimed the lives of 147 Torontonians.

The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care had dropped from 94 on Wednesday, but total deaths rose by 26.