Good evening. Thank you, Chair and the committee, for the opportunity to speak this evening, and thank you to all of you for doing after-hours work. I recognize that it's not early there.
I am an infectious diseases doctor, but I am also a clinician-researcher who does research in viral immunology, as well as the implementation of health systems related to infectious diseases. My involvement throughout this most recent pandemic, I think, is my primary reason for being here. I was involved at the municipal, provincial and federal levels in the domains of testing and the innovative generation of ways to test people for infectious diseases, particularly COVID. I was also involved in and continue to be involved in therapeutics for COVID and the delivery and different models of delivery within Nova Scotia and different provinces.
My view on the pandemic comes from there and all the biases and important information that may come.
After reviewing the bill as it stands at the moment, I'll divide my comments very quickly into three different sections. Those are the preparedness part, what we do and what we can do best in a pandemic, and then the post part, which I won't highlight as much.
To start with the prepandemic bit and predicting pandemics, I think one of the important parts that's mentioned within the bill at the moment is “one health” and the recognition that humans, while numerous, are a small part of the planet and not the most important part when it comes to predicting pandemics and pandemic disease. Recognizing there are other things that can cause pandemics and other threats, including antimicrobial resistance, pandemics are often caused by viruses that spread through the air.
One of the things we need to recognize more is that animal health is part of human health. We are one animal and we can't forget about all the others. It is noted in the bill that there should be consideration of this area, but I think it's something we've done extraordinarily poorly—not just in Canada, but in the world—and it should be a focus of the go-forward plan.
Sticking with viruses and going into a pandemic, it's important to note that there is an intersection between pandemic-potential pathogens—say that three times fast—and air, including clean air of various kinds. While the respirologists have been saying for many years that we need indoor spaces that are clean, this has highlighted the fact that when we are at a density of where we are with human populations—not just in urban areas, but in rural areas these days too—and the amount of time we spend indoors, this has to be a priority of where we go forward in how we live in terms of the cleanliness of air and what standards can be brought in to help that.
While that doesn't sound like a very infectious disease doctor thing to talk about, it is very linked to the mitigation of spread when you're talking about a country with cold weather and a lot of people.
The next part I would highlight is that we could have done a better job before and during this pandemic in understanding the patterns, pathogen disease and pathogenesis. Once we are in a situation where we have a pandemic, we really seem to get stuck many times in what the usual is, what the previous normal was and understanding what respiratory viruses are. Clearly, we don't understand that well, and I think we need to be very careful that in any bill that comes forward, we highlight that.
That's research and understanding viruses, and having a high standard for vaccine studies after they're marketed. There's a lot we don't understand about the variability of responses in humans. Some people respond well and some people don't, and we need to really hold to account companies and people doing vaccine marketing after the vaccines come to market, or we're not going to get far quickly.
I'll hold the rest of my comments until later.
Thank you for the opportunity.