Region pausing COVID-19 dashboard updates until the fall

Just as the province plans to wind down on wastewater surveillance next month, the Region of Waterloo Public Health has paused the dashboard that has provided information about COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses.

In a statement to CityNews Kitchener, the region’s health unit said the province has “sunset the technology solution implemented during the pandemic that supports COVID-19 surveillance. All Ontario Public Health Units have recently migrated to a different provincial public health information system for COVID-19 surveillance.”

They added that those changes are why they have put a temporary pause on weekly updates of the Integrated Respiratory Disease Surveillance Dashboard for the region.

“We recognize the value of easily accessible, local respiratory activity data to our residents. We are using this pause in public reporting to understand the impact of this technology change and to position ourselves to provide meaningful respiratory viral surveillance data products for the 2024-25 respiratory season. In the interim, information can be found on Public Health Ontario’s Ontario Respiratory Virus Tool.”

The region’s public health unit will keep updating the Wastewater Surveillance Dashboard until the wind down on July 31.

The dashboard pause is only temporary — with the page expected to be updated again in the fall.