Ban non-essential travel, Legault urges Ottawa
`To go on an all-inclusive deal to Cancun' is not acceptable, he says
Anxious to maintain a fragile positive trend in Quebec's COVID-19 situation, Premier François Legault called on the federal government to ban all non-essential international travel and do more to ensure returning travellers respect quarantine requirements.
“I sense that Quebecers are angry, ” Legault said Tuesday. “And I am angry to see that as we are making efforts there are people who are travelling for fun to foreign countries and who come back here with the virus and plug up our health-care system.”
Federal action to block frivolous international travel becomes even more urgent, Legault said, as new and more contagious strains of the virus circulate in such places as the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa. Quebec has already seen a handful of cases of the new variant that is plaguing the U.K., including one case that was reported on Tuesday, public health Director Horacio Arruda said.
He said he understands someone needing to travel to visit a dying parent, for example, “but to go on an all-inclusive deal to Cancun with buffets and what have you, to party around the pool, sorry, but it's not essential, and I think it's possible to stop those trips.”
Legault said non-essential travel should be banned at least until the most vulnerable people get their first shots of the vaccine. He said he has raised the issue in private with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but wants action on it now. He has asked Public Security Minister Geneviève Guilbault to look into what Quebec can do at its airports if the federal government fails to act.
In the meantime, he said, the federal government needs to do more than use automated calls to remind recent travellers to quarantine. He wants travellers to Canada to show a negative COVID test before they travel, get tested upon arrival in Canada and again a week later. He also wants federal officials to conduct in-person visits to ensure recent travellers are quarantining.
Although many Canadians see freedom to travel as a right, Legault noted the government already moved to block travel temporarily during the first wave. “Obviously, it is done only in exceptional cases and what we are experiencing right now is exceptional,” Legault said.
Quebec reported 1,386 new cases of COVID-19 on Jan. 18, and nine more people were hospitalized for a total of 1,500 now in hospital, 212 of those in intensive care.
While the situation in hospitals is still critical, there are some encouraging signs, Legault said.
“We have gone in a week from 2,500 new cases per day to about 2,000 new cases per day. When we look at active cases, we went from 24,000 cumulative cases still active in Quebec to 19,000 active cases yesterday in Quebec.”
He thanked Quebecers for reducing contacts and respecting the 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, saying, “The efforts you are making are starting to pay off.”
But some parts of Montreal remain worrisome hot spots. The government plans to increase testing in neighbourhoods where positivity rates are above 500 cases per 100,000 residents, including St-léonard, St-michel, Ahuntsic, Montreal North, St-laurent, Rivière-des-prairies, Anjou, and Montreal East.
Legault said rapid tests, whose results are available in about 15 minutes, will be used in some schools and mobile testing clinics in those neighbourhoods in order to contain outbreaks quickly.
Legault notes that 80 per cent of residents in long-term care homes (CHSLDS) have received their first doses of the vaccine, as have more than 100,000 health-care workers. Within 10 days, vaccination will begin in private seniors' homes, Health Minister Christian Dubé said.
But Quebec has had to revise its vaccination schedule now that Pfizer has reduced the number of doses it will be delivering in the next few weeks, as the company works to increase its manufacturing capacity. The province had hoped to administer 250,000 first shots by Feb. 8, but will now probably only manage 225,000, Dubé said.
Asked why the government is not recruiting more doctors and nurses from private clinics — those that offer non-essential cosmetic surgeries for example — to work in the province's increasingly overwhelmed hospitals, Dubé said the government has negotiated 22 agreements with private clinics so far to have them perform procedures normally done in hospitals. This has removed some 16,000 surgeries from hospital waiting lists, he said. Discussions are underway about moving specialized doctors and nurses from these clinics if necessary, he said.
Legault defended his government's decision to send elementary and high school students back to school, saying the increase in COVID-19 cases this will cause is outweighed by the mental health and educational benefits. He said he hopes that after Feb. 8, public health will give the green light to allow more in-person learning for CEGEP and high school students as well.
Questioned whether the government still expects the curfew and other lockdown measures to be lifted on Feb. 8, Legault said until the number of hospitalizations starts to come down substantially, he can't answer that.