Health committee  There are several elements to your question, so maybe I will start with the last one about the pandemic. If there is a pandemic, it has yet to be declared by the World Health Organization at the global level. As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general, is indicating that the window of opportunity for containment is closing, but at the present time, it is not, in his opinion, a worldwide pandemic.

Health committee  It's difficult for me to comment. I respect Dr. Weiss as a physician and specialist. For my part, I work closely with public health specialists. That's my area of expertise. Other specialists may have other opinions. I'm okay with that. In Canada, we're not at that point. It's tough to predict the future should the outbreak become more widespread in Canadian communities.

Health committee  Yes, that's something the special advisory committee discusses. If a situation arises anywhere in Canada, we are always ready to respond as the circumstances warrant. For the time being, however, it's hard for me to say what exactly would need to be done should this or that happen.

Health committee  That's a tough question. For me, personally, I could always use more resources and more money, but that's just me. As part of the Public Health Agency of Canada and also the Government of Canada, I would say we're doing well. As I said, it's always nice to speculate about what you could do with more resources, but, certainly, as you can see in terms of the whole-of-government approach and what we've been doing to date, I think we've been successful to date.

Health committee  It's difficult for me to comment, because it's a provincial responsibility. I would say that at the Government of Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, we do have what we call surge capacity support, so, should a province require additional support, maybe for some of the equipment we have in our national emergency stockpile system, we're certainly able to meet that request.

Health committee  It's difficult for me to comment on what someone else said on Radio-Canada, but I can tell you that we are working closely with our provincial and territorial counterparts. I co-chair a national technical committee with representatives from every province and territory. My co-chair is Dr.

Health committee  Yes, we're still in a containment strategy, but we're not solely fixed on that. We're also, as I said earlier, preparing for a possible pandemic and further spread.

Health committee  To add to what Ms. Evans said, the direction or the advice for self-isolation is for travellers coming back from Hubei province, but for mainland China up to now, there's also been advice given that they should be monitoring for symptoms in the next 14 days—obviously, that's if they've come from mainland China in the past 14 days—and that, should they be coming down with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, they should contact local public health.

Health committee  I am actually also a veteran of SARS, so I guess I'm one of those people who were involved with SARS and H1N1, as were many other physicians and public health experts across the country. I would say that, yes, we are leaning on people who have gone through those, in terms of their experience, and we are using their expertise.

Health committee  Yes. We're still in the containment phase—

Health committee  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.

Health committee  Not at all. We certainly understand that border measures are just one layer in a multisystem approach to preventing and hopefully controlling the spread of COVID-19 in Canada. It's never been understood or recognized that border measures alone will stop it. We know that with this disease—as with many other infectious diseases—there is something called an “incubation period”.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to update the committee on the Public Health Agency of Canada's efforts to respond to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in Canada. A lot has happened since the last briefing on February 5. As you are aware, things continue to evolve globally in terms of the spread of illness and response efforts.