Lack of coordination and medical disinformation in Canadian self-assessment tools for COVID-19

Brieanne Olibris; Amir Attaran

With respect to Part Two: All provinces inquire into COVID-19 related symptoms, but the scope of questions posed in their tools varies greatly from narrow to broad. Saskatchewan and Newfoundland & Labrador only screen for fever, cough and shortness of breath (or difficulty breathing for New Brunswick). British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island start with this narrow base, but more broadly incorporate additional symptoms: in no particular order, sore throat, fatigue, headache, muscle aches, sneezing, runny nose, and lethargy or poor feeding in infants and young children. Notably, Quebec is the only province to integrate screening for anosmia into their tool. A full comparison of screened symptoms by province is available in Table 1 . information about their symptoms unless they have returned to the province within the 14 days prior to using the tool or unless they indicate that they have had contact with a confirmed case or someone who is a possible case, defined in Nova Scotia as someone who has returned from out of province or country with a fever or cough. A critical deficiency of Nova Scotia's tool is that it can prematurely draw conclusions without input as to the patient's symptoms, but rather just the travel history of the patient or the travel history and symptoms of others.