COVID-positive travellers not contacted, quarantine hotel system flawed, AG report says
CTV
The Public Health Agency of Canada struggled to enforce COVID-19 restrictions at the border through the first half of 2021, resulting in failures to contact positive COVID-19 cases and uncertainty over whether those required to be tested or stay in a hotel quarantine actually did so, according to the Auditor General.
In a new report issued Thursday, Auditor General Karen Hogan Hogan identified “significant gaps” in the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)’s administration of emergency travel measures that came into effect in early 2021. Specifically she called out major shortcomings with the enforcement of the requirement for incoming travellers to take a COVID-19 test 72 hours before arriving Canada, and the introduction of required quarantine hotel stays for returning travellers awaiting test results.
According to the performance audit:
These measures were supposed to limit the introduction of COVID-19 and its variants into this country. In Hogan’s view, despite some improvements, PHAC has largely fallen short on its responsibility to direct the implementation of border control measures as they have evolved over the last 20 months.
Notably, while the requirement for a negative test result has remained in place since it’s been enacted, the hotel quarantine stay requirement ended in August 2021, but has recently come back into wider use for certain incoming travellers amid fears over the Omicron variant.
