LILLEY: If Canada faces a fourth wave, there will be only one person to blame
One-third of air travellers aren’t submitting their second test and yet still aren’t followed up on by quarantine officers
Author of the article:Brian Lilley
Publishing date:May 28, 2021 • 16 hours ago • 3 minute read • 89 Comments
A man at Pearson Airport in Toronto. A report revealed some shocking new information that confirms concerns about our current border measures and quarantine system being leaky, writes Brian Lilley.
A man at Pearson Airport in Toronto. A report revealed some shocking new information that confirms concerns about our current border measures and quarantine system being leaky, writes Brian Lilley. PHOTO BY CARLOS OSORIO /Reuters
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Summer is so close you can taste it, and not a summer like last year, a real one. In Alberta, the government has announced they will lift all restrictions in time for the Stampede, in Quebec, restaurant patios are opening up again and Ontario has just announced their plans for a two-dose summer.
Summer is there for the taking but could easily slip away due to a persistent problem that the Trudeau government in Ottawa refuses to deal with — variants coming across the border.
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This isn’t the latest salvo from Ontario Premier Doug Ford, it’s all in a report from a task force assigned by the Trudeau government to advise on testing and screening measures.
You may have heard of one part of the report, the call to end the three-day hotel quarantine which the report finds is applied inconsistently and ineffectively.
That same report raises the possibility of variants of concern taking hold in coming months as they did previously. The report cites concerns about vaccines being less effective against variants and that testing methods may need to adjust along with border measures as new variants emerge.
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Despite the Trudeau government’s ongoing claim that travel, especially international travel, is not an issue, the report notes that border measures didn’t stop the variant of concern (VoC) first found in the United Kingdom.
“Previous border measures were insufficient to prevent the importation of the B.1.1.7 VoC, which is now the dominant strain in Ontario and British Columbia,” the report states.
The report also revealed some shocking new information that confirms concerns about our current border measures and quarantine system being leaky.
“For example, air travellers submitted 31,616 arrival samples for testing from February 22 to March 6, 2021. However, only 21,100 samples for day 10 quarantine exit tests had been received by March 20,” the report states.
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That is 33% of air travellers not submitting their second required test during quarantine.
This isn’t information that the Public Health Agency of Canada has released previously when asked about testing but they have confirmed that 27% of air travellers who test positive don’t test positive until that second test. How is it that one-third of air travellers aren’t submitting their second test and yet still aren’t followed up on by quarantine officers?
Now to bring this back to the newest variant to have officials worried, the B.1.617 first found in India.
Public Health Ontario has confirmed that between May 12 and May 19 the number of B.1.617 cases grew from 45 to 260, nearly a six-fold increase. That’s only part of the story because across Canada there is not mass screening for this variant. Ontario only screens 5% of positive cases meaning the actual case count could be as high as 5,200 in Ontario alone.
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In the United Kingdom, a country well ahead of Canada in the vaccination race, this variant has spiked in recent weeks. Cases are up 20%, hospitalizations are up 20% and the B.1.617 variant now accounts for 75% of new infections. This could soon be what Canada is dealing with.
Yet the Trudeau government still says that the border isn’t an issue.
During a call with premiers on Thursday night, Trudeau got into a heated discussion with Ford on the issue of the border demanding that the premier tell him what he wants done on the border. According to sources familiar with the call, Ford pointed out that he has sent three detailed letters with requests and that the federal government is responsible for border security.
Trudeau’s only response was to raise the issue of banning international students.
Every single provincial reopening plan hinges on keeping case counts and more importantly hospitalizations down. The UK is now dealing with a new wave driven by an imported variant, it’s not wrong to worry that Canada could be dealing with the same thing shortly.
Trudeau refused to act on the border ahead of the first wave and the third wave — both driven by imported cases — if Canada faces a fourth wave, there will be only one person to blame.
LILLEY: Trudeau task force report states border measures might need to be adjusted because of variants
torontosun.com