How lessons from the Ebola crisis can help with COVID-19

I arrived in Monrovia, Liberia in June, 2014, to work on justice reform with the United Nations as the number of Ebola cases was only a couple of hundred. There was a week of normalcy, nervous denials and jokes about not shaking hands. (Sound familiar?) And then, everything changed.

In a matter of days, we went from not being prepared for what was coming, to not being prepared for what was actually happening. Over the next six months, the fragile health-care system was swamped and mistakes piled on mistakes as the government tried to respond. Thousands of people got sick and died who could have been saved.

Here are some of the lessons learned that can help Canada better respond to COVID-19.

First, good clear data and information is critically important to combat both the spread of the virus and the spread of misinformation. I can’t overemphasize how important it is for government to be constantly focused on providing information about the progression of the disease, how to combat it and how to deal with the realities of getting sick.

Paranoia and conspiracy thinking are their own viruses. They thrive in the shadows of events like this waiting to break out when the flow of public information is non-responsive or untrustworthy. They undermine the ability of public health authorities to do their work. They can’t be stopped, but they can be crowded out of the conversation.

Second, protect caregivers. The people who are most at risk of getting sick are health-care professionals and in-home caregivers, usually women, who put themselves in close contact with infected people and run their own immune systems ragged. Financial, social and emotional supports to these people should be prioritized.

Third, get boots on the ground, and resources deployed, and don’t forget the rural areas. Whatever response the government is considering in respect of deploying health-care professionals, testing kits, necessary medical supplies and other resources, and economic stimulus has almost certainly been underestimated.

The problem requires a bigger response than is currently being planned. This is not the time for half-measures. We can delay and slow down the spread of the virus and minimize its impact only if we flood the ground with resources early. In Canada, this means rural communities without access to hospitals, First Nations that are woefully underserviced and remote northern Inuit communities will need a more focused and more-resource intensive set of supports.

Fourth, the response should be driven by public health officials and not police or security institutions. The public health legislation across Canada gives public health officials broad powers to fight the virus. These include the powers to impose quarantines, isolation zones and to detain people.

These are extreme state powers and they need to be used judiciously, responsibly and in a manner that is sensitive to people’s civil liberties.

While the police, the military and private security may be involved as supports, they should never be the public face of the response. Further, they should be prevented from deploying automatic weapons, body armour and tactical vehicles in any effort to support a quarantine or other public health response. It sends the wrong message.

Fifth, it will happen again. We should be working to ensure we are better prepared for the next time.

Benson Cowan is the CEO of Nunavut Legal Aid. In 2014-2015 he was the special adviser for rule of law to the deputy representative of the secretary general of the United Nations mission in Liberia.