Let me respond to the previous comment about the border measures. I can't speak for Dr. Tam—I'm sure she'll have the opportunity to maybe clarify or speak for herself in terms of border measures—but it's not about closing the borders. From a public health perspective, closing the borders has never proven to be effective in terms of stopping the spread or the introduction of disease into any country.
I think what Dr. Tam might have been thinking about with the border measures was in terms of looking at what's happened in other countries, such as Italy now, and the spread to many other countries and regions. The supplementary border measures that we've had up to date include giving additional information to travellers from China, from Hubei province. You can imagine how if that list gets expanded—to Japan, South Korea, Italy and so on—obviously, there will be a trickle-down effect in terms of what provincial authorities may need to follow up on. That's the issue that I think Dr. Tam was addressing.
To your point about Minister Hajdu reflecting on containment, yes, in Canada we're still in a good position to maintain our containment approach, but we do recognize and are cognizant of what's happening at the global level. Dr. Tedros at the World Health Organization did indicate that the window of opportunity is closing. At the same time that Canada is still maintaining its containment posture, if I can put it that way, we're also starting to prepare for a possible pandemic. We can't do this with our eyes closed and not recognize what might happen weeks and months from now, which has nothing to do, maybe, specifically with Canada but with what's happening internationally.
As I said in my opening remarks, we have two foundational documents. There is a federal/provincial/territorial public health plan for biological events in terms of a response plan. Lots of things are already under way, including a special advisory committee of the chief medical officers of health for each of the provinces and territories. We meet with them regularly, multiple times during the week, to look at issues, guidance, policies and programs we need to put in place to address COVID-19. As well, there's something called the Canadian pandemic influenza plan. This was based on previous experiences, including with H1N1. That's what we're now looking at in terms of forward planning.
To give you an example of the kinds of things we're looking at—I think it's the same for other countries around the world—should there be widespread transmission in Canada and in many other parts of the world, we would be looking at such measures as what we call “social distancing”. Do we need to start looking at cancelling mass gatherings and public events? Would there be things like looking at what we need to do with schools, and students attending schools, and people sick in the hospitals and so on?
That's all in the future. We're certainly not there yet, but we are actually taking a close look and making sure we're prepared for that.