COVID-19 Late break insert Although the federal government has relented regarding the issue of arbitrarily quarantining returning Canadians and permanent residents travelling by air (which was recommended by its COVID-19 panel), this does nothing to ease the bordercrossing embargo on land-based, non-essential travel which is, by far, the major access route to and from the United States. The land border remains closed and government still advises U.S.-bound travellers to “avoid all non-essential travel.” They supplement that advisory by warning that contravention of the advisory might jeopardize their private travel insurance benefits. To put this into some perspective, Canadians made almost nine million outbound overnight trips in 2020, compared to 33 million in 2019. Total overnight trips fell by 73 per cent during the year, with overseas activity down by twothirds (-67%) and trans-border trips declining by more than three-quarters (-77%). Eightyeight per cent of the activity took place in the first quarter, before the pandemic was declared. Conference Board of Canada What price lockdowns? According to the British Columbia-based Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan think-tank that has, for many years, beenmonitoring the effectiveness of Canada’s health-care system, studies of more than 200 nations’ responses to the pandemic have shown that early and aggressive testing and availability of acute care hospital beds have been far more critical to reducing transmissions and lowering mortality than have been government-mandated lockdowns. Its report, “Global Storm − The effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Responses Around theWorld,”released onMay 27, 2021, found that Canada ranked poorly, compared to other industrialized nations, in its performance of early COVID testing and availability of acute care hospital beds. Senior Fellow at the Institute and chief author of the report, Livio Di Matteo, professor of economics at Lakehead University inThunder Bay, Ontario, noted that out of 35 developed countries in the International Monetary Fund, Canada ranked 26th in the number of tests performed per million people, and 32nd in its availability of acute care hospital beds per capita. In addition, Canada had only 2.5 acute care beds available for 1,000 people. That compared to 12.2 in South Korea, and eight in Germany). Di Matteo concluded: “Lockdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions have hurt the international travel industry and the labour-intensive personal services, food and accommodation, tourism and arts and entertainment sectors, as well as disrupted the global supply chain.” He also emphasized that the prolonging of Canada’s lockdown strategy does not appear to have been a major factor in curbing long-term spread of the pandemic, or curbing the deaths from COVID-19. It still takes two Though U.S. congressional committees continue to press for a border opening and a re-introduction of “non-essential” travel between our two countries, most of the resistance to doing so appears to be weighted on Canada’s side. As Dr. Nathan Stall, geriatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto told the CBC: “We seem to be paralyzed in Canada…we don’t differentiate between who’s vaccinated and unvaccinated… It really defies logic …Fundamentally, it’s like, we’re all going to move as one, because it’s not fair that some people are going to get to go ahead of others.” © Copyright 2021 Milan Korcok. All rights reserved. Milan Korcok is a national award-winning journalist, author and medical writer who has been covering international health-care activities and trends in Canada, the U.S. and abroad for many years. He has long served as contributing editor to the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association and currently serves as contributor to the International Travel and Health Insurance Journal in the UK. Milan is a dual Canadian/ American citizen. He lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. CSANews | SUMMER 2021 | 47
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