Ottawa Public Health third-party review gives thumbs up to local pandemic response

The preliminary findings of a third party review of OPH’s pandemic response was presented to the Ottawa Board of Health Monday.

Report author Dr. Paul Gully is a professor at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, and a former public health officer. He says, under the circumstances, the OPH team did a good job.

“It is incredibly difficult to plan for what we don’t know, Gully said. “The way Ottawa did respond, it would have helped to have better information ahead of time. I think was good.”

The preliminary recommendations included having a pandemic plan, including scenarios for extended emergencies, as well as maintaining a strong focus on community engagement and examining the consequences on staff, supervisors and managers at OPH.

Ottawa residents CTV News spoke to mostly agreed that OPH did the best they could given the circumstances.

Francois Latreille said he thought they did a good job and could not have planned it better considering what happened.

“I think nobody expected what happened, no one expected it would last so long and because of that you could not plan everything from the ge- go,” Latreille said.

Creativity helped OPH succeed, and engaging influencers like Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds helped push OPH’s communication efforts world wide.  

Ottawa resident Stephen Faubert felt he was kept informed of pandemic restrictions by OPH even if the messages from different levels of government sometimes conflicted.

“I think their messaging was fairly clear on most of the rules, sometimes thought the province was not as clear,” Faubert said. “I think they have done a fairly good job. I’ve tried to follow their directions.”

Some hope if another public health emergency occurs, more emphasis can be put on why, and not just what we need to do. Meghan Matthews was frustrated when rules or precautions would change with little explanation.

“Sometimes it seemed that they did not quite know what they were doing or were contradicting what they were saying so people were following rules and it ended up not being the right thing,” Matthews said. “I feel if everyone understood more than we could be educated properly instead of just being spit out things that ended up kind of being wrong.”

Ottawa Board of Health member Peter Tilley summed up the boards response to the preliminary report, saying “It was nice to see this objective recognition of the quick response and effective response of Dr. Etches and the team at Ottawa Public Health.”

Dr Etches will present OPH’s response to the report at the next Board of Health Meeting, outlining how the health unit will adopt the report’s recommendations.