North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit Data Breach (2020)

The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit (“Health Unit”) announced today that there was a privacy breach in relation to its online COVID-19 dashboard. The dashboard contained information related to the number of COVID-19 tests and confirmed cases in the local community. Inadvertently, personal identifying information was made accessible through the dashboard. A member of the public reported the breach to the Health Unit. The likelihood of someone else having accessed the information is quite low, because it was not immediately visible and accessing it required a number of steps that were not obvious. Information that was accidentally made accessible was first and last name, municipality, unique identifying number (but not OHIP number), testing date and location, and the test result (if available). It may also have included a telephone number. There was no other health, financial or personal information accessible through our dashboard. The dashboard has since been removed from the Health Unit’s website.