COVID crunch-time missteps rattle New Brunswickers' confidence

It's crunch time for New Brunswick's COVID-19 response and the cracks are showing.

Case levels over the last month have been beyond what anyone would have imagined last summer, when we were patting ourselves on the back about the province's sound management.

But that management is now undergoing its biggest stress test, and missteps, mistakes and reversals have shaken public confidence.

The bumpy rollout of a new registration system to pick up rapid tests "makes people feel not as confident in the process and maybe not as confident in the information that's being sent out," says Işıl Flynn.

Flynn is a Fredericton technology project manager who works on improving the "user experience" with websites. She says that in general, the province's COVID sites are far too text-heavy and confusing.

More visual information would be easier to understand than large amounts of text, she says.

"Unless there's a legal need to have that much information, it's probably going to get skimmed over anyway."

Rothesay teacher and lawyer Brian Stephenson says the province's plea that people follow Public Health guidelines "presupposes that we knew what they were yesterday, and therefore can incorporate whatever changes we heard today."

Last Wednesday night, a simple mistake led to short-term alarm among francophones who thought the province was banning travel between health zones and restricting contacts to two-household bubbles.

Linda Dalpé, a doctor in Caraquet, heard from a counterpart in Tracadie that those measures were listed in a new PDF of the province's Level 2 restrictions.

The two physicians are among several who've been collating pandemic information and posting it on Facebook to fill what they consider a communications shortfall by the province.

"She had just written a post, and then she noticed: 'Did they change Level 2 again?"" Dalpé said.

"We were trying to go back in time in our documents to find what error happened. … The colleague took down her Facebook because she said everybody's going to freak out and be confused."

The document was eventually corrected, but in the meantime a lot of people were rattled.

"We're in a state of emergency, right, so information needs to be clear," Dalpé says.

Among other recent examples:

• Case projections released Dec. 21 were described by Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell as including Omicron data but didn't. She called that "a bit of a misstep."

• Grocery stores were said to be allowed to require proof of vaccination, then were banned from doing so on Dec. 17, then were allowed to require it again after the ban was removed from the emergency order Dec. 27. That change has yet to be officially announced or explained.

• The distribution of rapid tests shifted to an online registration system with a day's notice, and was limited to certain groups, just weeks after the government urged the entire province to make regular use of the tests.

"I know there has been some confusion over the past days as this new process has come into effect," Health Minister Dorothy Shephard said at a news conference Friday.

"There are bugs to work out. This is relatively new, especially in the context of how we're changing the testing policy."

She said all provinces are revising their rapid-test strategies, and "they are all struggling to get the proper communication to everyone as quickly and as accurately as they can."

Flynn says it looks as if elements of the vaccination appointment system have been "bolted on" to the new rapid-test system, which may have been a smart move in a hurry.

"Rather than recreate the wheel, you use what you have. … They were probably under an enormous time crunch to have this ready."

Still, "there's a miasma of uncertainty out there and I'm not sure that's the frame of mind to be in when you're working your way through a Byzantine process to just put your name in for a test kit."

The abrupt change on rapid tests are part of a larger shift in the province's COVID-19 strategy to focus less on overall cases, because most of them are expected to be less severe, and more on those among vulnerable populations and those ending up in hospitals.

Shepherd said on Dec. 31 that the Omicron variant "cannot be stopped" and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell said focusing on the most vulnerable represented "a new phase" in the pandemic. 

That message may have been lost in the midst of the holidays, but they repeated it again at Friday's news conference.

Warnings of 'little glitches'

Shephard said the changes to rapid-test distribution are leading to people getting faster access to tests and results, despite the initial bumps.

"These improvements really are that: they're improvements. It's just a big shift all at once." 

She also warned there will probably be more "little glitches" Monday morning when the online booking system for booster shots opens to New Brunswickers aged 18 and up. 

"This is a very big lift when we have to pivot so quickly. Omicron has forced that, and I ask for New Brunswick's patience in understanding that perfection could not be the holdback for the good." 

Earlier last week Russell asked for "a few more days to work out the kinks."

Dalpé traces the current public anxiety back to the decision last July to lift all COVID-19 restrictions, a move that provincial officials say in retrospect was a mistake.

"Something shifted in August, and there's a trust in Public Health that needs to be back," she says.

Shephard said Friday that people in the health system have been working "around the clock" since Christmas to manage the "pivot" in strategy.

Stephenson says that's fair, at least as far as minor mistakes go.

"Frankly, I give them a fair amount of slack," he says. "As much as it's now two years old, it's still new to the individuals that are doing it. No one aspired to a career doing that in the way that they're having to right now." 

But he says Shephard, Russell and others have to be transparent and be willing to explain things over and over, exhaustively, until all questions are answered. 

Otherwise many people simply won't get the message.

"Confusion gives people licence. … It's throwing up their hands. It's surrender. It's 'I don't know what [the rules] are. I'm going to do my best.'"