New Brunswick’s COVID-19 Recommendations Lacked Evidence, Auditor General Finds

New Brunswick’s Department of Health issued 33 recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic without enough evidence to substantiate them, the province’s watchdog said in a newly released report. Auditor General Paul Martin told a provincial committee last week that the office of the chief medical officer was unable to provide him with the information it used to develop many of the COVID-19-related recommendations that dictated the province’s health orders. The Department of Health said it could not “provide a fulsome and detailed list of all of the evidence consulted and used when recommendations were being formulated,” the auditor said in his report, which covered the period of April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2022....