The Globe and Mail - 03.04.2020

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OTTAWA/QUEBECEDITION ■ FRIDAY,APRIL3,2020 ■ GLOBEANDMAIL.COM

In Ontario’s Bruce County, librar-

ians are being asked to trade

checking out books for checking

temperatures at the doors of

nursing homes.

The county located along the

shore of Lake Huron has offered

library and museum workers the

opportunity to keep earning their

full salaries during the pandemic

shutdown if they are willing to

serve meals, clean bed pans and

help residents with activities at

two publicly owned long-term

care homes.

Only seven of 54 workers have

accepted the offer, even though

COVID-19 has not been detected

in either home.

Bruce County’s effort to turn li-

brarians into nursing-home aides

is just one example of the ways

governments and the owners of

long-term care and retirement fa-

cilities are scrambling to find ex-

tra staff as the new coronavirus

sweeps through homes for se-

niors, sickening some front-line

caregivers and frightening others

away.

In Quebec, the provincial gov-

ernment announced $287-mil-

lion in funding on Thursday to of-

fer a $4-an-hour raise to personal

support workers in seniors’

homes and bonuses to other

front-line staff fighting the epi-

demic.

In British Columbia, the pro-

vincial health officer has taken

control of staffing at nursing

homes in the Vancouver area for

six months

CARE HOMES, A

Carehomes

desperate

tofind

staffturn

tolibrarians

KELLY GRANT

LAURA STONE

The military is ready to deploy to remote
Indigenous and Northern communities if
it is needed to combat outbreaks of the
novel coronavirus, Canada’s top general
says.
General Jonathan Vance told The Globe
and Mail he is also planning to put reserv-
ists on the payroll full-time so they will be
available to conduct humanitarian activ-

ities in communities that need help. Earli-

er this week, the government said it would

be ready to mobilize up to 24,000 Cana-

dian troops to respond to COVID-19. Gen.

Vance estimated reservists would make

up about 25 per cent of that, although he

said he doesn’t have final numbers yet.

He added that a “wartime effort” is an

accurate way to describe the intensity of

the Canadian Forces’ preparations during

the COVID-19 pandemic and how high the

stakes are.

The military’s top priorities are to be

able to respond quickly to remote com-

munities that are infected with COVID-19,

and to help deal with natural disasters

such as forest fires or floods if the pan-

demic reduces the ranks of emergency

workers, he said.

“The main planning effort right now ...

is to be able to deploy a large task force to

a community that is difficult to access.

That would meet the requirements of an

Indigenous community or any of our iso-

lated Northern communities,” he said.

MILITARY, A

Militaryreadytorespond

tooutbreaksinisolatedareas

‘Wartimeeffort’preparationsinplacetohelpIndigenous,Northerncommunities:GeneralVance

ROBERT FIFE
MICHELLE CARBERTOTTAWA

[SOCIAL DISTANCING]

SWEDEN:EUROPE’S

LOCKDOWNEXCEPTION

Scandinaviancountrypursuesdifferentapproachtooutbreakasrestaurants,

barsandschoolsremainopenandpeoplecontinuetomingleoncitystreets A

Stockholm streets bustle with pedestrians on Wednesday.FREDRIKSANDBERG/TTNEWSAGENCY/AFPVIAGETTYIMAGES

In the early afternoon of Jan. 31, the lead
World Health Organization representative
in Beijing held a video briefing to update
diplomats on the spread of a deadly new
virus – and to laud China for everything it
was doing.
Only a day before, the WHO had de-
clared a “public-health emergency of inter-
national concern” over the deadly new
coronavirus that causes COVID-19, after an
initial outbreak in China’s Hubei province
began to spread around the world. The
WHO also said no restrictions on travel or
trade were necessary.
On the video briefing, the WHO’s top
man in China, Gauden Galea, praised the
Chinese virus response. Then he went a
step further, calling on other countries not
to step out of line with the WHO recom-
mendations, a key concern for Beijing,
which was furious that countries were be-
ginning to close their borders to Chinese
travellers. Any United Nations member
country “will have to scientifically justify”
any measure that “goes beyond UN recom-
mendation. This justification will be made
public,” Mr. Galea said, according to notes
of the meeting made by one of the partici-
pants and seen by The Globe and Mail.
It amounted to a warning from the
WHO, said the person, whose identity The

Globe is not disclosing because the source

is not authorized to speak publicly. And it

was directly in line with messages from

Beijing, which in subsequent days said it

“deplored” countries that ignored WHO

recommendations and enacted travel bans

that, according to foreign ministry spokes-

woman Hua Chunying, “sowed panic

among the public” and “gravely disrupted”

trade. Now, with the virus rapidly spread-

ing across Canada, new questions are be-

ing asked about the WHO’s relationship

with China and whether the organization

has sought to curry favour with Beijing –

for access or money – in ways that have un-

dermined the reliability of its advice.

In 2003, the WHO vocally criticized Chi-

nese leadership for covering up the initial

spread of the virus that caused SARS. Amid

the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the or-

ganization has pointedly refused to de-

nounce China’s concealment of informa-

tion, even after it became clear that au-

thorities in China had muzzled doctors.

In mid-January, the WHO said it had no

evidence of person-to-person transmis-

sion of a virus that has subsequently

shown a remarkable ability to spread

through communities. And the WHO has

relied on Chinese official data even when

their veracity have been called into doubt –

most recently by the U.S. intelligence com-

munity, which believes China deliberately

manipulated numbers to mask the sever-

ity of its COVID-19 toll.

WHO, A

WHOsparkedconcernitwas

puttingChina’sinterestsfirst

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE
ASIA CORRESPONDENT
BEIJING

MICHELESPATARI/AFP/GETTYIMAGES

Africasetto

declarevictory

overEbola

Continentbetter

preparedtofight

COVID-19asaresult A

SCIENCE

Researchersstudy

howvirusfares

inairborneforms A

REPORT ON BUSINESS

Auto-partsmakers,

medicalcompanies

joinforcestobuild

ventilators B

Four hospitals in Ontario have

declared an outbreak of the cor-

onavirus after dozens of workers

tested positive for COVID-19, just

as the province braces for the full

force of the pandemic.

The hospitals are all part of

Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Pub-

lic Health, northwest of Toronto.

The disease has cut a wide swath

in the region, endangering every-

one from physicians and nurses

to dietitians and maintenance

workers, said Dr. Nicola Mercer,

Medical Officer of Health for the

region. Guelph General Hospital

has been hardest hit, with 21

cases of COVID-19 as of Thurs-

day.

The outbreak began in the

hospital a week ago, when four

workers on the same ward tested

positive.

In all, 33 hospital workers in

the region have tested positive

for the disease, demonstrating

how easy it is to transmit CO-

VID-19 once it infiltrates a facil-

ity.

“This virus is very infectious,”

Dr. Mercer said in an interview.

“It is easily transmitted person to

person, and the social-distancing

measures are often difficult to do

in a health-care environment.”

The toll the coronavirus has

taken so far in one of Ontario’s

34 public-health units offers a

glimpse of what might be in

store for front-line health-care

workers elsewhere.

The Ontariogovernment does

not release statistics on the num-

ber of COVID-19 cases for each

health unit.

HOSPITALS, A

Coronavirus

infectsdozens

ofhealth-care

workersat

fourhospitals

KAREN HOWLETT