Public Health Agency was unprepared for the pandemic and 'underestimated' the danger, auditor general says
2021-03-25 from cbc.ca
Despite nearly two decades of warnings, planning and government spending, the Public Health Agency of Canada was not ready for the global pandemic and did not appreciate the threat it posed in its early stages, Canada's auditor general says.
In a hard-hitting review released today, Auditor General Karen Hogan took the country's primary pandemic response agency to task for failures in early warning, surveillance, risk assessments, data-sharing with the provinces and follow-up on Canadian travellers who were ordered into quarantine.
"The agency was not adequately prepared to respond to the pandemic, and it underestimated the potential impact of the virus at the onset of the pandemic," said the AG's review — one of three that looked at the Liberal government's management of the COVID-19 crisis, which as of Thursday had killed 22,780 Canadians and brought the country's economy to its knees.
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