Article content continued
The lab turned its attention to COVID-19 earlier this year and eventually set up what it called a “vision council,” hoping to identify the pandemic-related issues in greatest need of innovative solutions. The council consisted of a who’s who of Canadian and international corporate CEOs, including the president of China’s Alibaba — the world’s largest online retailer — the global head of McKinsey consultants, and Loblaw’s Galen Weston. Also among them was Mark Carney, former head of Canadian and U.K. central banks, and Michael Sabia, now the federal deputy minister of finance.
But there were also some more surprising big thinkers, including Atwood, British novelist and game writer Naomi Alderman and opera singer Measha Brueggergosman.
The council eventually settled on the need to test more widely, to better identify the small minority of people who have COVID-19 in the hope of opening businesses sooner.
Atwood asked why there couldn’t be something for COVID as convenient as a pregnancy test, recalls Gans.
Soon enough, the lab was tasked with starting a program and Agrawal managed to recruit 12 diverse companies to develop a pilot system: Air Canada, Rogers, Scotiabank, MLSE, Magna, CPP Investments, Genpact, Loblaw, MDA, Nutrien, Shoppers Drug Mart and Suncor.
Rogers, Air Canada, Suncor, MLSE and Air Canada recently launched the first pilot projects in Ontario and Alberta using tests provided by the provinces, with about 2,000 screens administered as of Sunday.
It all raises the issue of why it took the private sector — as opposed to government — to implement what seems like a sensible way to try to hasten the return to normalcy.
That’s a fair question, says Agrawal diplomatically, “but not one I can answer.”
U of T colleague Gans also hesitates to criticize.
“This is a national problem,” he said. “I would have liked national, provincial leadership on this … (But) what I’ve learnt is there are so many issues that in the midst of a crisis, it’s very, very hard to do them all.”
