Ottawa advises against foreign travel, restricts incoming flights.
Cancel vacations outside country, Tam advises
The federal government announced drastic travel restrictions Friday in a bid to clamp down on rising coronavirus rates.
"My advice is to postpone or cancel all non- essential travel outside of Canada. This means reconsidering your vacations, going to sporting and entertainment events, large international conferences,” Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said during a news conference.
This is the first time that the country’s top doctor explicitly advised Canadians to cancel any form of international travel, suggesting trips within Canada instead.
“This is especially important for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions who are at a higher risk of developing severe disease,” she said.
“This is an extraordinary, unprecedented situation,” said Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister.
As of noon Friday, there were 157 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada, with Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick reporting their first cases.
The federal government also announced a host of new travel restrictions involving flights and cruises in the hopes of slowing the proliferation of the coronavirus in Canada from international sources.
Overseas flights coming into Canada will soon be allowed to land only at a limited number of airports, Transport Minister Marc Garneau announced.
“This is a precaution that we should take so that we concentrate overseas international passengers coming into Canada to a smaller number of airports,” Garneau told reporters.
The details as to when this measure will be put into place and which airports will be chosen have yet to be announced.
As cruise ship season approaches, the government also decided that vessels of more than 500 passengers will not be allowed to dock in Canada before July 1, 2020, at the earliest.
Neither will cruise ships will be allowed to make any stops in the Canadian Arctic for the entire season, “given the limited public health capacity in Canada’s Northern communities,” Transport Canada added in a news release.
None of these measures will apply to ferries or smaller vessels yet, but more may be to come, the department said.
The new precautions are implemented in addition to the enhanced screening measures at all land, rail and marine points of entry announced last week. Those included questions on if travellers have been to a “highrisk” country in the past 14 days, and a screen for symptoms of COVID-19.
“We know Canadians are worried,” Health Minister Patty Hajdu said.
"And let’s be clear, this is a serious public health threat and a crisis, as well as an emergency, and everybody is working as diligently as possible to contain the spread globally.”
Hajdu acknowledged she was aware of how inconvenient some of these measures are for Canadians, but stressed that they were crucial in slowing the coronavirus’ progression.
“Over t he past t wo months, we’ve been planning for this worst case scenario and we know now that we have to take additional measures each day and we will be coming to you with additional measures. And we know these measures are going to cause disruptions in your lives but we know that they are also incredibly necessary,” the health minister said.
These measures come less than two days after U. S. President Donald Trump announced a 30-day travel ban on citizens of 26 European countries that takes effect from midnight on Friday.
Asked if Canada was considering a similar ban, or imposing border measures between our country and the United States, Hajdu was categorical in her response: they don’t work.
“Canadians think we can stop this at the border. But what we see is a global pandemic, which means that border measures are highly ineffective and, in some cases, can create harm,” Hajdu said.
“We see that in countries that had the worst expressions, the tightest borders, As an example, she pointed to Italy, which quickly shut down borders when the virus started to spread. The country now ranks second in number of confirmed COVID-19 infections.
When travel bans are put in place, “travellers become less honest about where they’ve come from, where they’ve travelled to, and what their symptoms may be,” she said.
With the exponential increase in diagnosed cases of the coronavirus in the United States, is that country soon going to be considered a high- risk place for transmission?
“We are considering all travel outside of Canada to be considered high- risk for Canadians right now,” the health minister said.