Coronavirus report card: Experts give Canada a B, U.S. an F

TORONTO -- The novel coronavirus became a reality in Canada six months ago today.A man who had travelled to Wuhan, China, had fallen ill after returning to his home in a Toronto suburb. He sought medical attention, and doctors diagnosed him with Canada’s first presumptive positive case of the virus. Two days later, test results on the man came back positive, and his wife was diagnosed as the country’s second presumptive patient.

As this was happening, health officials from

B.C. to Ottawa were saying that there was little risk to Canadians, and the World Health Organization (WHO) was holding off on declaring the virus a global health emergency. Much has changed since then. The disease caused by the virus has been given a name – COVID-19 – and the world is in the grip of the greatest pandemic in decades. There have been more than 15 million confirmed cases of the virus and more than 600,000 deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. In Canada, there have been more than 110,000 cases – more than the entire population of Moncton, N.B. – and nearly 9,000 deaths.

Half a year after COVID-19 first showed itself in Canada, CTVNews.ca asked seven prominent epidemiologists, public health experts and infectious disease specialists to look back at the pandemic responses of Canada, the United States and the world as a whole, and put together a report card for each – assessing their strengths and weaknesses thus far, and assigning them a letter grade.