Who says cases attributable to travel have been under-counted? The Public Health Agency of Canada, that’s who. A footnote on the government’s own international travel cases says: “This is an underestimate of the total number of cases concerning returning travelers, as exposure history is not available for all cases.”
Kelley Lee, professor of global health policy at Simon Fraser University, and Anne Marie Nicol, an associate professor of health sciences at the same institution, recently noted that the argument against stronger travel-related measures relies on PHAC’s data, which suggest the low risk from travel. Yet the numbers Blair quotes only count those direct cases involving air passengers. Any subsequent community transmission by travelers is not officially counted. Cases involving land or sea travelers are not included. No data is collected on inter-provincial travel, beyond detected exposures on domestic flights.
In its rosy view of border control, the government assumes that all international arrivals adhere to its mandatory 14-day quarantine. But given the limited enforcement, Lee and Nicol note that some arrivals may not quarantine properly, if at all.
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