While Ontario is processing thousands of tests for COVID-19, a gap in what data has been reported could be influencing how people react to the pandemic, according to a health communications expert with Ryerson University.

As the Star has previously reported, more than 60 per cent of confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday don’t list how the virus was transmitted, while age and gender are missing for around half of the cases. The province has said that information may be missing because investigations are underway, or because non-Public Health Ontario labs don’t receive the same level of detail as tests conducted by Public Health.

But when it comes to looking at how COVID-19 could be affecting us, people are “desperately looking for ... some tangible truth,” said Dr. Jessica Mudry, an associate professor with Ryerson University’s school of communication.

“We just don’t know much about this (virus). We don’t know much about how it spreads, how actually virulent it is,” Mudry explained in a phone interview with the Star. Gaps in the data are therefore “unsatisfying” because it is impossible to patch up holes and explain what we don’t know about COVID-19.

By nature, people are concerned with their own mortality, Mudry said. “If they see themselves interpolated (in the data), then they crack down on their own behaviour” and start making choices that would protect them from contracting or spreading the coronavirus.

If they don’t see themselves in that data, there is a risk that people will become apathetic and won’t feel the need to modify their behaviour. Instead, if there is incomplete information, people may see numbers indicating that the risk to them is low, which could result in them making dangerous decisions.

“When you have data gaps, people don’t know what to do. They don’t know if they’re at risk themselves,” Mudry said. “We’re looking to this data to help us shape our behaviour” and answer the question of how worried we should be about the pandemic.

The province has said that the reports are based on information provided by Public Health Ontario labs, “as well as certain hospitals that are helping to expand lab testing capacity,” said Hayley Chazan, spokesperson for health minister Christine Elliott, in an interview with the Star Tuesday.

“While we make every effort to co-ordinate and validate those lab results with the local public health units, in some cases there may be a lag in information sharing at the time of posting,” Chazan said.

Dr. Ben Bolker, professor in mathematics, statistics and biology at McMaster University, said it’s crucial to test as many people as possible to get an accurate view of how many people are infected.

“I assume they are pouring huge amounts of resources into increasing our testing capability, and I believe they’re ... probably doing that as fast as they can,” he said.

While Bolker is an epidemiological modeller, he stressed that he is not involved in working with Ontario’s cases.

“The more testing they can do, the better,” Bolker said, pointing to aggressive testing in Iceland and the village of Vò, Italy, where researchers tested all 3,000 inhabitants for the virus.

More testing means a fuller picture of the crisis, Bolker said.

The province is testing people who are probably infected, he said, which is “great for the medical mission. But it makes it very, very hard to know what the actual ... prevalence (of COVID-19) in the population is.”

As far as how Ontario is doing when it comes highlighting the severity of the crisis, Mudry said she thought “Ontario’s messaging has been a solid 5 out of 10.

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“Until we can say definitively how the cases in Ontario are being transmitted, then people aren’t going to do much.”

Also lacking is information about community transmission, she said. “People are going to go ‘Well, I didn’t travel, and I don’t know anyone who did, so I am OK.’

“We forget that taking the bus, walking to the store and buying something, going out for dinner, all constitutes ‘travel’ at this point if we have (the virus) within our community.”

With files from Patty Winsa