TORONTO —
The novel coronavirus became a reality in Canada six months ago today.
A man who had travelled to Wuhan, China, had fallen ill after returning to his home in a Toronto suburb. He sought medical attention, and doctors diagnosed him with Canada’s first presumptive positive case of the virus. Two days later, test results on the man came back positive, and his wife was diagnosed as the country’s second presumptive patient.
As this was happening, health officials from B.C.to Ottawawere saying that there was little risk to Canadians, and the World Health Organization (WHO) was holding off on declaring the virus a global health emergency.
Much has changed since then. The disease caused by the virus has been given a name – COVID-19 – and the world is in the grip of the greatest pandemic in decades. There have been more than 15 million confirmed cases of the virus and more than 600,000 deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. In Canada, there have been more than 110,000 cases – more than the entire population of Moncton, N.B. – and nearly 9,000 deaths.
Half a year after COVID-19 first showed itself in Canada, CTVNews.ca asked seven prominent epidemiologists, public health experts and infectious disease specialists to look back at the pandemic responses of Canada, the United States and the world as a whole, and put together a report card for each – assessing their strengths and weaknesses thus far, and assigning them a letter grade.
Our expert panel includes:
Dr. Anna Banerji, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto
Dr. Lisa Barrett, an infectious disease specialist at Dalhousie University in Halifax
Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease specialist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.
Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious disease specialist based in Mississauga, Ont.
Dr. Brian Conway, president and medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre
Dr. Ronald St. John, the first director-general of the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Centre for Emergency Preparedness
Ashleigh Tuite, an epidemiology professor at the University of Toronto
CANADA BETTER THAN AVERAGE
Although all of our experts said that our country’s response to the pandemic had obvious room for improvement, Canada was given high marks relative to the U.S. and the world.
“We’re in a position where we have low community spread all over the country, to a point that we even have the option of safely … opening indoor dining and bars and schools,” Chakrabarti told CTVNews.ca via telephone July 21.
“In the grand scheme of things, we have actually done a very good job and we should actually be proud of ourselves for that — but proud in a way that we don’t get complacent.”
Chakrabarti gave Canada an A-minus – the highest mark of any of our experts, though not by much. He noted that most other countries with similar caseloads went through periods where their hospitals were overwhelmed, which was never the case here.
“We never were at a point where we felt appreciably out of control,” he said.
Many of the experts praised Canada’s federal, provincial and municipal governments for often presenting a united front during the pandemic, learning from experiences elsewhere in the country and usually having clear, rational explanations for decisions around shutting down and reopening parts of the country.
“Even though we don’t necessarily agree on every level of risk, there is at least some methodology to it,” Chagla said July 21 in an emailto CTVNews.ca, in which he graded Canada’s performance as a B-minus.
“A lot of health-care workers and front-line workers and EMS really put themselves at risk at the beginning, because we didn’t have the supplies,” Banerji said in a telephone interview on July 22.
While governments may have fallen short at times, most of the experts had praise for how Canadians as a whole listened to public health advice.
“Canadians get an A-plus. Regardless of what the policy said, they generally did the right thing regardless,” Barrett told CTVNews.ca July 23 in a telephone interview. Barrett gave Canada as a whole a lower B-plus, due to foreseeable issues affecting long-term care homes and other vulnerable settings.
Canadians’ attitudes are also shifting around the accuracy of test results, Banerji said, as more evidence emerges that false negative results are a significant problem – leading to advice that anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19 should stay home, even if they have tested negative.
Inaccurate tests are just one of several problems the experts warned will be on the horizon as provinces reopen the businesses and sectors of society that were closed in the spring. The long-term lack of federal funding for Indigenous health care is another, Banerji said, while Tuite noted that some parts of the country still lack the capacity to carry out effective contact tracing.
Conway, who gave Canada a B-plus, cautioned that young adults may see reopening as a sign that the country is returning to normal, which could be dangerous as long as the virus remains active.
“There is a lack of understanding that public health measures are still needed and that we are possibly not ever going back to the full-on old normal,” he said July 22 in an email.
Despite the challenges in the past and those that may be ahead, the experts’ grades reflect that they feel Canada has weathered the pandemic relatively well – especially considering the situationon the other side of the world’s largest international border.
Chakrabarti said that while he’d give New Zealand an A-plus for its coronavirus response, its geography gives it a built-in advantage over most other countries.
“We don’t have the luxury of being an island nation,” he said.
“We have the U.S. next door to us, and they have the worst outbreak in the entire world, and we were still able to get to this point.”
5 OUT OF 7 SAY U.S. FLUNKS
Is the American pandemic experience really the worst in the world? It depends how you measure it.
Our southern neighbour does have the highest raw numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths anywhere, and its testing rate is low enough that it cannot account for that. But several European countries have worse per capita death rates.
Regardless of whether the U.S. is at the absolute bottom of the list, our panel made it clear they can find little to praise in the American response. Five of the seven experts gave the U.S. a failing grade.
“[The U.S. is] a raging flunk. What’s your lowest letter?” St. John said July 21 during a telephone interview.
The greatest scorn, though, was reserved for what many of the experts described as a clear lack of federal leadership. Unlike in Canada, where provincial and local authorities have generally followed the federal handbook, mixed messages have abounded.
“There’s been conflicting messaging and communication and an overall anti-science feel to national response,” Tuite said July 21 in an email.
Tuite actually gave the U.S. the highest grade of anyone we asked – a D – but categorized the American response as disappointing, noting that the surges of the past month were “predictable and preventable.”
Those surges have led to “50 states [that] seem like they’re doing 50 different things,” as Chakrabarti put it, with no clear nationwide approach to stopping the virus or even fully understanding its progress.
“I don’t even know if this is a first wave or a second wave,” Banerji said.
Barrett noted that there has been “a lot less overall buy-in” from Americans than Canadians and others when it comes to adjusting lifestyles in order to halt the spread of the virus.
“You can open Disney World, but no one has to go – and everyone did,” she said.
St. John, who started his career at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said he has been “amazed” by how small a role that organization has had in the American response.
“Ordinarily it would be the CDC that would be leading this and co-ordinating things across the entire country — and they’re nowhere to be seen,” he said.
The CDC may be nearly invisible in Washington’s response to the pandemic, but one public health leader has been much more prominent. Several of our experts singled out Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for his work to keep science at the forefront of the American debate.
In giving the U.S. a D-minus, Chakrabarti described Fauci as “one of the brightest shining lights” of the American pandemic experience, noting that he was one of the first prominent voices to tout the staged approach to reopening now being used across Canada.
However, Fauci’s frank manner and willingness to contradict the White House have repeatedly put him at odds with U.S. President Donald Trump, who appears to be less rigorous about sticking to scientific consensus.
“You have to give [Fauci] credit for trying to talk about science, but you’ve got the head of the country that says maybe by injecting bleach, you can stop COVID,” Banerji said.
“There’s no consistency. There’s nothing there. To me, it’s unbelievable,” Banerji said.
And things could well get worse as community spread continues unchecked in some parts of the country. Even Trump has admitted that there will likely be further escalation of virus activity before the situation starts to improve.
“It is still early days, and the U.S. is in the worst possible position to deal with events going forward,” Conway said.
THE WORLD GETS A ‘C’
Ultimately, neither Canada nor the U.S. can eliminate COVID-19 on their own. As Health Minister Patty Hajdu has said, “as long as COVID is raging out of control in another country, Canadians will not be safe.”
So, how are we doing on that front? How is humanity doing at fighting off what might be the greatest collective threat to emerge in decades?
Our experts were nearly unanimous on this question, with six out of seven giving the world a C. Most said this was a sort of average grade, taking into account the parts of the world where the virus has been beaten back and those where it is still raging uncontrollably. Overall, though, there was a general air of pessimism.
“Globally we have learned that we were not prepared for a pandemic,” Tuite said.
Since it was first reported in Chinaat the end of 2019, the virus has followed a relatively straight pattern across the planet – first affecting South Korea, Japan and other Asian nations, then moving on to Europe and crossing the Atlantic Ocean to North America, before finally emerging in South America and Africa.
By following this track, the virus has been able to ramp up its activity in countries including Brazil, India and South Africa even as earlier-hit nations in Asia and Europe have largely got a handle on it.
Several of our experts said this should not come as a surprise, especially given the lack of proper health-care resources in some parts of the developing world – the gulf between “the haves and the have-nots,” as Banerji put it.
“At least the States has the ability to contain this. We don’t have that in other [countries],” Chakrabarti said.
“What’s happening in other parts of the world is likely going to get worse before it gets better.”
Barrett said that she fears the deteriorating situation in the developing world may be ignored by the developed world, presenting a major hurdle to eradicating the virus.
“The biggest challenge right now really, really, really is that we’re nowhere near done,” she said.
Several experts noted that the pandemic has shown the ability of many of the world’s countries to work together, both in sharing information about the virus and in working to develop vaccines and treatments for it – even though there has never before been a successful vaccine for a coronavirus.
“[There is] a clear understanding this is a pandemic and we are all in this together,” Conway said.
And while disastrous COVID-19 situations in some countries can have some questioning the world’s readiness to deal with a pandemic, Banerji said that it’s important to remember the virus itself is a difficult enemy to defeat.
“This is one of the most highly infectious viruses that we’ve had at least in 100 years, maybe in several hundred years. This is as bad as it gets,” she said.
“Even with the best procedure or policy, it’s still very difficult to contain.”
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
