TOUGH TALK

Ottawa is ‘looking seriously’ at mandatory hotel quarantines for returning travellers

OTTAWA — Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says the federal government is “looking seriously” at tougher travel measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, including mandatory hotel quarantines for air travellers returning from non-essential trips abroad.

“I would like to stress that we are taking this measure very, very seriously. We are considering the issue very, very seriously,” Freeland said in a news conference Monday in response to a question about the potential quarantine rule.

Freeland’s remarks, given in French, build on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s publicly expressed openness earlier this month to tighter restrictions, sparking questions about how a stricter isolation regime would work.

Successful pandemic repellers from South Korea to Australia require 14-day hotel quarantines for passengers arriving from abroad.

In New Zealand, which had 64 active COVID-19 cases as of Monday, passengers head straight to a “managed isolation facility” — a hotel — if they have no symptoms or a “quarantine facility” if they do.

In South Korea, new arrivals must self-isolate for two weeks at a government-designated facility at their own expense or at their home, and must download a tracking app to ensure compliance.

The potential quarantine requirement would deter leisure travel, said Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious-disease physician at St. Joseph’s hospital in Hamilton and an associate professor at McMaster University.

Rather than rigid adherence to two weeks of isolation, the move should include scheduled testing that might allow guests who come up negative to go home early, he said.

“Whether or not it has to be the entire 14 days or a shorter amount followed by testing is still up in the air,” Chagla said.

Most cases are detectable after seven days — including mutated strains of the virus — he added, citing data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal figures suggest between two and five per cent of COVID-19 cases in Canada are linked to travel, but there is still virtually no testing at the border and many recent cases do not have an identified source.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford called on Trudeau Monday to mandate testing of all arrivals, by air and land, saying he had confidence Ottawa would soon require it.

“But we need it now,” Ford said. “Every time I look up in the sky I’m thinking, ‘How many cases are coming in?’ ”

More than 150 international flights with confirmed COVID-19 cases have touched down in Canada in the past two weeks, according to figures from the Public Health Agency of Canada.