Alberta’s government quietly eliminated its public reporting dashboard of COVID-19 outbreaks in acute care facilities, saying the province is under no legal obligation to continue publishing the data in a “post-pandemic context.”

Alberta Health Services’ (AHS) acute-care outbreaks webpage provided weekly public reports on COVID-19 outbreaks in AHS and Covenant Health facilities, including the location where an outbreak had been reported, the date the outbreak was declared, the number of units affected, and how many patients and health-care workers were infected.

Since launching in 2020, the public health reports had been published like clockwork every Tuesday. Until April, when without explanation, the information on acute care outbreaks stopped being updated.

United Nurses of Alberta President Heather Smith said eliminating information on COVID-19 outbreaks increases the risk of exposure and transmission of the disease.