Air traveller COVID-19 testing is a must

Flying into Canada from abroad will soon become a little more inconvenient and possibly a little more expensive. Under the circumstances, that’s all good.

While a relatively small percentage of the country’s COVID-19 cases have been traced to people who arrived on international flights, the illness is increasingly making its way into Canada this way.

With the second wave of COVID-19 showing no signs of abating and hospitals at risk of being overwhelmed, we’ve got to find new ways to fight the deadly coronavirus.

That’s why starting Jan. 7, anyone arriving in Canada on a flight from abroad will need to have a negative COVID-19 test before boarding their plane.

The federal Liberals were right to impose this new rule. The wonder is that it took so long for this to happen and became so bogged down in petty, partisan politics.

Since March 13, 2020, the federal government has strongly advised against non-essential travel because it can lead to the spread of COVID-19. It obviously knows air travellers can arrive here infected and then infect others. That’s why it orders everyone returning to Canada from abroad to complete a strict, 14-day quarantine. But why didn’t Ottawa do even more to screen air travellers, as many other countries have done? South Korea, Taiwan and Japan — which have had greater success in controlling COVID-19 than Canada — long ago introduced testing programs for international flights.

Now Canada will, too. Yet, it seems odd that federal officials waited until the last day of 2020 to announce the details of the new testing program. Were they embracing this measure or were they pushed? Canada’s airline industry had repeatedly called for the rapid testing of air travellers not only for health reasons, but to bring back the volumes of passengers airlines need to survive.

Then two weeks ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford claimed the federal government had failed in its duty to secure the Canadian border during the pandemic by doing too little to screen air travellers. While Ford’s outburst was seen as a blatant attempt to shift the blame for the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Ontario, he did identify a gap in the nation’s public health defences.

Initially, federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair rejected Ford’s accusations, arguing that the federal government had imposed some of the “strongest border restrictions” of any country in the world.

The latest numbers, however, suggested Blair’s restrictions needed to be even stronger. There have been at least 1,300 flights that have either landed or taken off in Canada since the start of September with potential COVID-19 exposures on board, according to information provided on Dec. 22 by the Public Health Agency of Canada. This included at least 200 flights during the two previous weeks in December, including five flights from the U.K., where a new and more contagious strain of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly.

By the end of December, four cases of that new strain had been reported in Canada. Two of them involved a couple in Durham Region who had not left Canada, but came into contact with a traveller from the U.K. All this takes us to this Thursday. Starting then, flyers aged five and up will need to have negative PCR tests within 72 hours of their scheduled departure and provide the results to their airlines before boarding their flight. The tests might not always be foolproof and travellers without adequate insurance will have to cover the cost.

But the tests will provide one more vital layer of protection for Canadians — and that makes them entirely worth the effort.