‘This is not a race,’ top doctor says
■ ‘We owe them a huge debt of gratitude’: Meet the people who volunteered to take experimental dose
One early morning in mid-October, Jonathan and Patricia Liedy woke their three daughters before dawn, loaded them into the car they’d packed the night before and set out from the north Florida home they had barely left in months.
Destination? A medical facility three hours away in Georgia.
The couple had appointments that would give them membership in a small worldwide club that has played a critical role in paving the way for a vaccine. They volunteered to be injected with an experimental vaccine to make sure it was safe for the world.
“I mean, that really is our philosophy of life,” Patricia, 36, said, speaking via Zoom from their home in Tallahassee.
“Instead of sitting there, hoping that someone will do something, get up and
be the person to do something. We can’t always do that, but this time we could.”
The scale of the coronavirus pandemic has spawned a massive global undertaking.
OTTAWA— Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are physically and mentally well and showing inspiring resilience as they near the end of their second year of imprisonment by the People’s Republic, says Canada’s ambassador to China.
Dominic Barton also says Chinese authorities were paranoid about containing the spread of COVID-19 as they denied consular access to the two men from January to October.
“Our understanding of why it was the case is that the Chinese are completely paranoid about the virus,” Barton said in testimony Tuesday night before the House of Commons special committee on Canada-China relations.
Barton is leading Canada’s efforts in China to win the release of Kovrig and Spavor, who were arrested and imprisoned on Dec. 10, 2018, in what is widely seen as retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Chinese high-tech executive Meng Wanzhou.
After months of delay, Barton was most recently granted on-site virtual consular access to Kovrig and Spavor in November, following similar virtual visits with the two Canadians a month earlier. The Chinese government has charged Kovrig and Spavor with espionage, but the Canadian government says their detention is arbitrary and has called repeatedly for their release.
Barton said it wasn’t just Canada that was blocked by the Chinese from visiting prisoners charged in national security cases; the U.S. and Britain faced similar restrictions.
When Barton was able to see them, he said he was able to verify they were in good physical and mental condition.
“They are robust,” said Barton, who was testifying from Beijing via video link. “You would be very impressed by seeing both of them.”
Spavor is being held in a prison in the city of Dandong near the North Korean border while Kovrig is in a Beijing area prison.