What’s the true picture of COVID-19 in Brantford and Brant County?

There are differences in what’s reported by local health authorities and what Public Health Ontario gives as local information.

And data provided by the province’s integrated Public Health Information System, or iPHIS, can be confusing as cases change ID numbers and are adjusted as more information comes in.

David Jensen, a spokesman for the Ontario Ministry of Health, says the Brant County Health Unit and the other health units across the province have the most accurate information.

He said that iPHIS is a “dynamic disease reporting system which allows ongoing updates to data previously entered.

“As a result, data extracted from iPHIS represents a snapshot at the time of extraction and may differ (day to day).”

One discrepancy comes with the reporting of COVID positive cases on Six Nations of the Grand River.

Six Nations, through its Ohsweken Public Health system, reports to Indigenous Services Canada, which is monitoring COVID positive testing among First Nations.

Indigenous Services said this week there were 12 COVID cases on Ontario First Nations. Six Nations is reporting nine cases, including one fatality.

The Six Nations numbers are then added back into the Brantford-Brant data on iPHIS, said Dr. Elizabeth Urbantke, Brant’s acting medical officer of health.

Sometimes, the numbers fail to add up.

On April 10, the health unit reported 60 cases and Six Nations had eight but iPHIS said there were 61, and the provincial data didn’t reach a total of 68 local cases until three days later.

On April 16, the two health agencies reported 68 and nine cases for a total of 77 but iPHIS said there were 71.

On April 21, the province said there were 81 local cases but the health unit reported 78 and Six Nations remained at nine.

The death of a Six Nations resident was never noted at a “fatal” case as of last week but the status of a man in his 80s, whose symptoms were first reported on March 8, was charged to fatal this week.

Ohsweken Public Health declined to release any information or age range about the community death due to the smaller population there.

Brantford’s first death, a woman in her 60s who was infected through community spread, shows up on the data with a date of March 16. Her death was confirmed on April 2.

Over the weekend, two further deaths – both associated with an outbreak at Brantford General Hospital – were reported. A man and a woman, both in their 80s, died. The man’s case is still pending to determine how the virus was acquired but the woman’s case is recorded as travel-related.

The data show, despite the deaths of older people, fewer people in their 60s, 70s and 80s have gotten the virus. There have been six cases of those in their 60s, seven of those in their 70s and four of those in their 80s. There has also been one person in their 90s with the virus.

But there have been 17 cases affecting people in their 40s and 16 affecting those in their 50s. Another 15 cases have been for those in their 20s.

The lowest age brackets getting the virus locally have been those under 20 (6) and the one person in their 90s.

Women represent the most COVID-19 cases with 48 recorded cases while men have 33 cases.

The bulk of the cases – 32 — have been traced back to someone having contact with someone who was later confirmed to have the virus.

Last week, a case that had been “pending” an outcome – that of a man in his 80s – was reported on iPHIS as fatal.

Ryan Spiteri, spokesperson for the Brant health unit, said that death points to one of the vagaries of the iPHIS system.

He said the man had a Brant address listed on file but it was later discovered his primary residence is in Toronto.

“Cases are tallied in the jurisdiction where the individual resides.”

Spiteri said the case information was in the midst of being transferred to Toronto Public Health when the person died.

“We did an exhaustive line-by-line search to discover the differences in counts a few days ago,” he said.

“We unequivocally saw that Six Nations cases are being counted as part of Brant’s statistics in Public Health Ontario’s count. I would urge Brant residents to trust the numbers we are providing to them as the most accurate source of information.”

SGamble@postmedia.com

@EXPSGamble