Originally Posted by
The Lev
This is all about responding to the political posturing of Doug Ford and Francois Legault.
I disagree - it's at least as much about being seen to be doing something about "UK strain" COVID coming into the country, and to me, to a lesser extent it's simply the only way the federal government can express ITS covid-fatigue.
The phrasing chosen in today's announcement was pretty telling; that both ministers talked about the fact that they can't ban foreign travel, and asking people to do the right thing hasn't worked, so now they're putting up whatever additional roadblocks the law DOES permit.
Originally Posted by
The Lev
As pointed out above, only 2% of COVID cases are imported from abroad. A negative test 72 hours before departure tells us that you probably didn't have active COVID 3 days before departure but it doesn't mean you didn't catch it in your ensuing three days or that you weren't too early for it to be picked up by the test. the typical Canadian on a one-week holiday who catches COVID on day 1 of their holiday and gets tested on day 4 will not yet test positive.
Again, today's announcements seemed to me to imply that this was more about erecting barriers to people travelling, period, than it was about catching COVID cases.
Originally Posted by
The Lev
The requirement for PCR testing is needlessly restrictive. Canada has a love affair with PCR
Canada is hardly alone in the world for PCR being the chosen test for people flying into the country. I'm only mostly sure that the great majority of nations with a COVID-test requirement at the border, require a PCR test, but certainly it's among the most common.
Originally Posted by
The Lev
and while it is good, it is expensive, the results take time and it is difficult to get in some locations.
I really get the sense from today's announcement that Health Canada sees both of these things as useful, in a policy that they're openly saying is designed in part to encourage Canadians to cancel or postpone their travel plans.