Health Committee on June 23rd, 2020

[Asaph Young Chun, Director-General, Statistics Research Institute, Statistics Korea]

I'm so honoured to be speaking with the Canadian House of Commons at the invitation of the House standing committee. I prepared a PowerPoint slide, and I was just informed that it was not possible to share my screen at the moment. I will just rely on perhaps some of the talking points rather than a number of visualizations that I thought may be more informative to this committee.

I will just use the slides as my talking points. As a background, I titled my remarks “nudging data and science-based exit policy”. I'm going to talk about partnership lessons from the crucible of the pandemic crisis, and that is the theme of my remarks today.

What do I mean by this title to begin with? Since the crisis that Canadians, Koreans and people across the globe are facing at the same time, I consider that this is a crucible because this is the trial that we can bear with and we can learn lessons from. Korea and Canada have crafted a very good partnership since last March. I'm going to talk about some of those partnership lessons that we have learned from it.

The partnership is based on data and science, and those are the main points that I'm going to talk about. Why science-based policy-making? This is very important. I think the best practice that I consider critical policy-making.... In today's 21st century, we need to have evidence and data for the science to inform our policy-making that includes this COVID-19 health policy-making that we all consider very important.

I'm going to make three points in this short presentation. The first point is about the data and science-based best practices to flatten the epidemic curve. Second, I'm going to talk about other sorts of innovation and the future that we need to plan in the post-corona period. Last I'm going to talk about the partnership ideas that I can suggest between Canada and Korea to deal with this coronavirus, but also I think there's some additional collaboration that we can partake in together.

In March, as I just briefly mentioned, the Statistics Research Institute and the University of Toronto, especially David Fisman's research team, worked together to model and then predict the life-course of this COVID-19, especially in Korea. In this [Technical difficulty—Editor] time, very critical to 51 million people in Korea back in February and in March. As director-general of the Statistics Research Institute, I've already been informing the good ground of a lot of good people to work together. We needed the scholars and then the models to work together.

David Fisman was very generous and very willing about the request that I proposed. We worked to get better, to model and then predict the life-course of this COVID-19.

In the past several months, we've been working together to plan a lot of these details about what the high point of—

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Chun.

Mr. Chair, there hasn't been any interpretation for quite some time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Chun, interpretation has stopped. With sound issues, it's very difficult for interpretation. I wonder if you're able to maybe speak louder; perhaps it might help. Just back up a bit and continue your statement from that point, if you could.

Thank you.

[Asaph Young Chun]

Okay, I'll try. I'll speak slowly and loudly so that the interpreter can catch it.

I was discussing the science and the database, the partnership. The scholars in Korea and in Canada have worked together in the past several months to model [Technical difficulty—Editor] of COVID-19 and then predict the actual course of this COVID-19 so that we can plan our policy-making accordingly in advance. That is the point. When you have this certain data and you know the pattern of this COVID-19 for the rest of its [Technical difficulty—Editor] life-course, then you can plan things better. That is the sort of partnership that we have together, and we've actually been very successful in predicting the life-course of this COVID-19 in Korea. We've had about eight modellings so far together to put this life-course at a very reasonable level of certainty.

In this process, there are a few things I'd like to share. Once we know the life-course of this COVID-19, one of the things—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chun, the interpretation has stopped again. It's very important that the francophone members are able to hear the translation.

Simultaneous translation is a very challenging undertaking. When there are issues with the sound quality and sound levels, it makes it even that much more challenging, so please bear with us.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We will now resume the meeting. Due to some technical issues with Mr. Chun, he will be joining us later.

Mr. Chen, go ahead with your statement for 10 minutes, please.

[Winston Wen-Yi Chen, Representative, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Health.

It is my great honour to provide a statement before this committee on such an important topic during such a challenging time.

It is my hope that during the course of this discussion I may be able to provide some insights as to how Taiwan has approached its fight against COVID-19 and that we will have the opportunity to discuss how countries such as Canada and Taiwan can share their experiences to better combat this virus. Allow me to take a moment to reflect upon Taiwan's experience.

Despite its proximity, close trade ties and tourist exchanges with China, Taiwan avoided the worst consequences of the pandemic. Indeed, with only 446 confirmed cases, seven deaths and 72 straight days without local transmission, Taiwan's success has allowed schools and businesses to remain largely open and operational as normal.

As Taiwan is neither a member nor an observer of the World Health Organization, this was all accomplished without the timely access to critical information that many other countries have benefited from. How then was Taiwan able to successfully fight the disease?

First, our fight began before the enemy was even present. Following the hard lessons of the 2003 SARS outbreak, Taiwan comprehensively reformed how it prepared for and would respond to eventual outbreaks.

Another key to our success was our government's quick and decisive action at the very beginning. When our Centers for Disease Control learned of atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan, we began actively screening passengers as they arrived in Taiwan. This action started on December 31, 2019, more than three weeks before Wuhan entered its lockdown period.

At the same time, Taiwan warned the WHO about a potential novel virus in Wuhan with human-to-human transmission. Regrettably, this warning was ignored, and the global community lost valuable time in terms of preparing for and combatting the virus. It must be stressed that Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO remains an impediment to global health, so we are grateful for parliamentarians in Canada and throughout the world who have supported Taiwan's meaningful inclusion in this organization and other international fora.

As the situation in Wuhan worsened, the Government of Taiwan activated its central epidemic command centre, or CECC. The CECC established a clear chain of command and began holding press briefings that disseminated accurate, up-to-date and transparent information to the public a full three days before Wuhan entered its lockdown.

Moreover, the CECC was led by medical experts who jointly held important political offices. Minister of Health and Welfare, Dr. Chen Shih-Chung served as the chief for our CECC, holding daily press briefings and coordinating all public efforts at the national level.

Our approach to combatting the disease and informing the public was proactive and aggressive. This had the dual effect of stemming the virus early and combatting disinformation by gaining the public's trust.

Over the course of the pandemic, the CECC has initiated more than 120 COVID-19 countermeasures. These include various restrictions on movement and travel, health screening at points of entry, mandatory self-isolation and much more.

The CECC also coordinated communication in an orderly and clear fashion so as to provide the most accurate real-time information. Moreover, we applied innovative, data-driven information technology solutions to track the spread of the virus, combat community transmission and allow citizens to have up-to-date information on the availability of crucial supplies to avoid panic buying. This was only possible through the consolidation of real-time data from a variety of government ministries and through the active co-operation of Taiwanese citizens.

Importantly, Taiwan made every effort to secure its supply chains for crucial medical goods, such as masks. We implemented a system whereby each citizen was provided with a stable allotment of masks, while production was simultaneously ramped up so that we could maintain a steady supply of personal protective equipment, PPE, for our citizens and health care workers.

Taiwan's strategy has allowed for a daily production of up to 20 million masks. This has meant that our government has been able to provide masks and other crucial medical supplies to countries around the world, including Canada. To date, we have contributed 1.5 million surgical masks, 100,000 N95 masks and 100,000 protective and isolation gowns to Canada in total, through the Canadian Red Cross, for distribution to front-line health care workers and indigenous communities.

We believe it is imperative that countries with the means to help one another do so openly, graciously and co-operatively. Taiwan is striving to do precisely that.

As for what can be done to further this co-operation, it is useful to consider the joint partnerships that our government has engaged in with other countries. For instance, Taiwan is conducting joint research and development of rapid tests, vaccines, treatments, information technology and more with our partners in the United States. We also maintain agreements with a variety of countries to ensure stable access to important medical supplies.

In any case, Taiwan stands ready to co-operate openly and in good faith with the Government of Canada. In that spirit, it our hope that countries like Canada can work with Taiwan to develop and share solutions. By working in concert with one another, I am sure that our two countries can promote better health outcomes for our societies and the world at large.

Honourable Chair and members of the committee, on behalf of Taiwan, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your time and thoughtful consideration. I look forward to taking your questions later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

The meeting is now suspended so that we can test Mr. Chun's sound.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

The meeting is now resumed. I invite Mr. Chun to carry on with his statement.

Please go ahead, Mr. Chun.

[Asaph Young Chun]

Let me get back to the main points. I was going to talk about three points in my presentation. First, we have had partnerships between scholars and officials of the Korean and Canadian governments since last March. Second, based on this partnership we have crafted, especially as we are going through this difficult time across the globe, we need to come up with an exit strategy. I'm going to talk about some data science and AI-based innovation in the digital economy. Finally, I'll talk about the next steps we can take to further enlarge and accelerate this Korea—Canada partnership.

When it comes to the first point of this partnership between Canada and Korea in the past several months, I'll talk about the important modelling activities we have done so we can plan things accordingly. Professor David Fisman and his research team based at University of Toronto and the Statistics Research Institute and many other research institutions based here in Korea have worked together since last March. We can model the course of this pandemic and then forecast some marginal data, and so we can plan a lot of things in advance.

As I recollect, the past several months this so-called idea-based model has been working really well, and we are able to forecast the maximum number of new cases we might have across Korea and in certain regions and the lowest point of the daily cases we are going to have, so we can plan a lot of non-pharmaceutical interventions accordingly. Because when you know the near future you are in good shape and can plan a lot of policy-making better.

For example, when you know how serious this epidemic is going to be and the extent to which it is going to impact families and kids, you can better plan all this online learning and school openings. When you have this kind of information you can encourage some of the teleworking sooner rather than later. When you know the course of the epidemic, you can find a good time to start mass gatherings, so the economy can still go on.

Those are the main lessons and the benefits we have learned from each other when we did this modelling together.

My colleague David Fisman and his research team also have picked up what we have gone through in the past several months when it comes to non-pharmaceutical interventions. This was the give-and-take, a very healthy exchange and partnership, so we can learn from each other and can handle our crisis better with data, evidence and science-based approaches.

I'll talk a bit about the non-pharmaceutical interventions we have institutionalized and have made best practices among the public. When we knew the three factors that affect non-pharmaceutical interventions, we tried to reduce the probability of infection at the personal level by encouraging the use of masks from the start, back in February, and hand-washing hygiene.

Second, when it comes to the societal level of nonpharmaceutical intervention, we knew that social distancing should be a very effective measure. Rather than waiting, we actually had sort of a proactive measure, a proactive sort of implementation of social distancing—like virtual education, teleworking and preventing mass gatherings—way in advance, back in March, so that this epidemic would not be as large as what other countries have gone through.

Third, this government-level intervention is using the 3T: testing kits, ICT-based tracing mechanisms, and treating patients with very good practices. We call this a 3T framework, and it has been working pretty well based on ICT-based tools, ICT-based guidance and a lot of these innovations that we started way in advance. That's the short of the main point.

When it comes to the second point I was going to tell you about, the exit strategy that we are considering at the moment, we've been actually discussing the so-called dynamic distancing. Once you know the cycle.... You know that this is kind of going down, but you're still uncertain whether it is going to come back, and you have this economy that you need to manage. You cannot simply lock down the whole country; you cannot continue to have a lot of the social distancing. We have come out with this sort of dynamic distancing, on and off. We keep the balance between a component of the economy to keep going and a moderate level of social distancing, while we have some other personal-level and government-level interventions in place. That's what we call dynamic distancing, and it's been working pretty well so far.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Chun, I apologize, but I wonder if you could wrap it up very soon.

[Asaph Young Chun]

Okay, sure.

That's the idea that we are currently experimenting with in real time. There are a lot of uncertainties here and there, but I think Canada and Korea have been working together to learn that this is actually going to work.

My last point is that this is not the end of our partnership. I think we can continue our partnership so that we can plan for this post-coronavirus period by working together with AI and data science-based innovation, and also some policies and collaboration when it comes to stemming the second wave or multiple waves of this coronavirus.

There are a lot of other things we can talk about, but I'll stop here and listen to your questions so that I can answer.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Kamsahamnida. Thank you.

We will now start our questioning. We will only have time, unfortunately, for one round of questions. We will do six-minute time slots, and we will start with Dr. Kitchen.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I just have a brief point of order, Mr. Chair.

Given the technical problems—and this happens, I understand; it's nobody's fault—I wonder if these witnesses could be brought back at a later date in order to take further questions. The experiences of Taiwan and South Korea have been so critical to our understanding of what needs to be done that I think there would be a consensus to give them another opportunity for further questioning at a later date.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis, for your point. We will take it up as a committee in due course, but thank you for your intervention. I apologize that we're not going to have a second round here. We just don't have the time.

Dr. Kitchen, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with my colleague's point of order, and hopefully that will be discussed.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today. It's greatly appreciated.

First of all, I would like to thank Ambassador Chen for his contribution, or Taiwan's contribution of PPE to Canada. It was greatly appreciated. Thank you for stepping up and doing that.

My first question is for you, Your Excellency. Taiwan leads the world as the most-prepared and best-equipped nation to fight the pandemic. We've seen that Taiwan can help and that Taiwan is helping. Could you describe what roles Taiwan can play in this unprecedented and challenging environment?

[Winston Wen-Yi Chen]

Thank you.

I think the COVID-19 pandemic is really a challenge, not only to my country but also to Canada and others around the world. In Taiwan, we try everything we can with our resources and power, and then work together with our international partners to make sure we protect the lives of our citizens. Given that the real situation is that we are not members of the World Health Organization and everybody understands the virus knows no borders, we cannot do our part by ourselves. It takes a lot of co-operation with neighbouring countries and international society.

That's the reason why the government and the people of Taiwan want to engage with the international community from time to time. Particularly in this pandemic, we noticed that our experience can be shared with our friends.

Nowadays, people are talking about the Taiwan model. With that in mind, I'd like to take a few minutes to share the real nature of the Taiwan model. To make a long story short, I'll say that number one is pre-pandemic preparedness; the second thing is quick, coordinated and proactive decision-making; third is health-forward policy-making, including by instituting border control, health checks at all points of entry and more; four is the application of big data, artificial intelligence and technology broadly; five is management of the production, purchase and dissemination of critical medical supplies; six is open, accurate, timely and transparent dissemination of information; and seven is productive and good-faith international co-operation.

In fact, we can use three words to describe it: transparency, technology and teamwork.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Ronald St. John has recently been quoted as saying that he thinks Canada's response to COVID-19 in January was a bit slow, and he also stated that the situation probably should have been taken a little more seriously.

I would point out that Dr. St. John was the first director general of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the national manager for Canada's response to SARS.

How important was speed when it came to the responses from Taiwan and South Korea, Mr. Chen?

[Winston Wen-Yi Chen]

As I mentioned earlier, given the proximity and the close exchange between Taiwan and China, for the government and people of Taiwan to prevent the spread of the virus in the early stage was essential. That was something the government had to take a quick decision on, and we did.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

Mr. Chun.

[Asaph Young Chun]

I think all the preparation is very essential, especially when you have some information that there is an asymptomatic part of the epidemic. You have to have very good tools in your hands when it comes to testing and tracing mechanisms. This is critical to the entire process of prevention.

This is where I think Korea was able to come up with some innovative ways of testing and tracing, way back in February, by creating some partnerships between government and industry. We gave more leadership to industry so they could come up with an innovative way of testing and tracing.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chun.

Following the SARS pandemic in 2003, most countries developed pandemic response plans that could be put in place almost immediately, and we've seen that Canada struggled with this, even though that's part of why the Public Health Agency of Canada was created, to deal with the response to SARS.

Part of what they talked about was preparing, doing drills and simulations. Did your governments ever conduct reviews, drills or practices for a pandemic response plan?

Mr. Chun.

[Asaph Young Chun]

I would not necessarily say that is was the drills.

I think the more important thing here is that we came at it by asking what sort of legal framework we could use to help the population to go through a difficult time together. I think they worked with some of this individual liberty versus the collective group of lives at stake, and then it's question of whether they can handle that kind of balance.

This was the very important legal framework that Korea was able to handle, when the Korean people went through SARS and then the MERS crisis in the past.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Chen, can we get a quick answer?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Go ahead, Mr. Chen.