On June 18, GSL Director Steven Hoffman was quoted in an article on Global News discussing the next step in COVID-19 prevention in light of 100,000 positive cases in Canada.
In the article, Hoffman says that Canada’s lack of a testing regime at the outset of the pandemic contributed to the now six-figure case count. As a positive example, he mentioned South Korea who “ere able to scale up their testing regime faster than others.”
On the question of why certain provinces were hit harder than others, Hoffman explained that it is likely a mixture of luck and good/bad policymaking: “Some provinces made good use [of the two-week national lag in the pandemic ramp-up compared to other countries], and those continuously reaped rewards because we’ve been able to look at how other countries have responded to outbreaks, and been able to figure out: ‘Do we want to respond like that country, or do we want to respond like that country?’. In other provinces, that time wasn’t made the greatest use of, either because testing wasn’t able to be scaled up, or other things.”
Looking forward to the next few months, Hoffman said this: “I think the next six months are going to be really difficult, in the sense that we are going to have a start to the lifting of these layers of protection but that we are going to have others that remain in place. There is going to be a situation where one day we’re going to be able to get a haircut again, and the next day, no more haircuts because the case numbers have gone up again.”
Read the full article here.
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