The early response in Canada to the pandemic has recently come under scrutiny and reveals further evidence of failures of the Public Health Agency of Canada. It looks like the Canadian response was even worse than the U.S. which has come under scathing criticism for errors in judgement from Trump on down to the CDC and the FDA.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/woodward-trump-canada-response-1.5721009
At the time it may have been reasonable to follow the guidelines and recommendations of WHO instead of some independent warnings. What is not reasonable is that early warnings from the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) were ignored by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The GPHIN is the crowning accomplishment of Canada’s public health system. Developed in conjunction with WHO, it gathers reports of suspected outbreaks from a wide range of sources in many languages and provides alerts to countries and agencies around the world. According to WHO, “GPHIN is one of the most important sources of informal information related to outbreaks. More than 60% of the initial outbreak reports come from unofficial informal sources.” GPHIN had an established track record detecting early signs of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, H5N1, MERS and Ebola.
https://www.who.int/csr/alertresponse/epidemicintelligence/en
The Conservative government under Harper reduced and reshaped Public Health in 2014. But the Liberals did not reverse the changes they once opposed when they took power in 2015. In late 2018 the federal government scaled back GPHIN even though its budget was a paltry $2.8 million. The shortsightedness and poor judgment in hobbling GPHIN had real consequences in Canada not receiving enough early warning information to make the correct decisions when the pandemic first surfaced.
The following is a long article but worth reading to understand some of the outstanding successes of GPHIN and why it failed (register for a free account).
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-without-early-warning-you-cant-have-early-response-how-canadas
Only now at this late date is the Canadian government calling for a review of GPHIN.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/patty-hajdu-global-public-health-intelligence-network-1.5715831
This failure of the Public Health Agency of Canada is inexcusable. For these terrible lapses of judgment and subsequent cover ups heads should roll. It doesn’t seem like even a wrist has been slapped.
