A pandemic sweeps across Canada in one or two months. It is spread not only by the sick, but by people who show no symptoms. There are shortages of medical supplies and the health system struggles to keep up. The peak won’t come for months, and it will be accompanied by a surge in deaths. Soon after, the country will brace for a second wave.
All of this is now true for the COVID-19 crisis, but the aforementioned scenario – a warning – comes from a
2006 federal report on pandemic preparedness. Fourteen years later, its words are eerily accurate.
Long before COVID-19 emerged, top health authorities from across Canada put together a playbook to prepare for a situation strikingly similar to the one the country now finds itself in.
One of the co-authors of that report was Theresa Tam, now Canada’s chief public health officer in charge of the fight against the novel coronavirus.
According to doctors who worked on the 2006 document, which was based on a hypothetical, highly contagious outbreak of influenza, the urgency of the report faded over time, though the threat never did. It is one of several credible warnings that seem to have gone largely unheeded.
A 2010 federal audit flagged problems with the management of Canada’s emergency stockpile of medical equipment; a 2018 assessment of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak a decade earlier raised concerns about ventilator shortages; and a 2019 study led by a team of global scientists questioned the ability of many countries, including Canada to prevent, detect, and respond to a major outbreak.
