Essex County's 'agri-farm' sector sees growing COVID-19 cases, but should we know where?

More than 40 new cases of COVID-19 in Windsor-Essex this week were farm workers but since the pandemic startedthe health unit has not disclosedthe names of the affected businesses.

The Windsor Essex County Health Unit says if there's no benefit to public health then there's no need to release the names of the facilities where workers are testing positive.

NDP MPP Taras Natyshak agrees. He said making thedata public isn't important and, instead, considers broad-based testing more critical for ourcommunities.

But Chatham-Kent-Leamington Conservative MP Dave Epp has a different take.

"Within the balance of privacy laws, I do encourage transparency so that people do know where the situations are," said Epp. "That encourages better behaviour by all."

Eppsays if long-term care homes, private or public, have to have their names made public, out of the interest of public safety, thenso should other sectors with manypeople working out of the same facility.

"This is a contagion that is not discriminating. It is attacking any of us and we're all susceptible to it and so we all need to be proactive and careful with it."

Breach of privacy at stake

Allison McGeeris an infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital who sayshealth units have to walk a fine line betweenrespecting privacy lawsandmaintainingpublic safety.

If an Ontario health unit did disclose a private business' identity without demonstrating a clear public health interest then it could be in breach ofprivacy laws.

"There are some instances where the protection of the community is sufficiently important and that you need to tell people about a particular location and, very occasionally, a particular person with a communicable disease," said McGeer.

"But if you don't have to do thatif there's no risk to the public of not releasing the information then public health officials are obliged not to do that."

Sylvain Charlebois, director of the agri-food analytics lab at Dalhousie University, said he doesn't see theneed to identifyaffected businesses because there has yet to be a single case of COVID-19 linked to food transmission.

Charleboisaddedmany smaller operations are not in a position to easily communicate the riskto the public compared tolarger processing plants.

CBC News also reached out to Windsor-Tecumseh MP Irek Kusmierczyk who did not comment on this story, saying this type of data falls under provincial jurisdiction.