Because the Public Health Agency already has a surveillance system and GPHIN had picked up news of the outbreak in Wuhan around the same time as BlueDot, we didn't send them that information because it was something they already had access to. But we have been working with the Public Health Agency around contextualizing this.
Understanding that something is appearing in the world is very different from understanding what risk it presents to Canada and where those risks are greatest at the particular moment. Is it in British Columbia, in Halifax, or somewhere else?
We shared some of our findings on the movements of travellers across the world with Dr. Tam and her office and then met in person to discuss some of the results and, more broadly, really, the need for systems. We had some earlier comments about data internally within Canada. We're clearly not a closed population; we are a microcosm of the world, one of the most connected populations on earth.
It was critical for us to have better systems not only to detect threats but also to quickly assess what risks they present, so that we could be a step ahead and mobilize our resources, heighten our surveillance in the right places at the right time, and to share with you the specifics of the risks associated with the events in Wuhan. That was really just a few days after New Year's in early January.