Margaret Bloodworth

There are ways to improve Canada's early pandemic alert and response systems, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says, but he also insists the country's top public health officials did start building a national response to COVID-19 very early on.

An interim review of why Ottawa's early pandemic warning system failed to issue a formal alert on COVID-19 has described a lack of detailed knowledge of the system by senior managers.

A former national security adviser will lead a probe of whether Canada's pandemic warning system failed just before COVID-19 struck, Health Minister Patty Hajdu said on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.