Canada needs a national COVID-19 inquiry now.

Publication date: Nov 15, 2024

We are now in the fifth year of an ongoing pandemic, and Canada continues to experience significant surges of COVID-19 infections. In addition to the acute impacts of deaths and hospitalizations, there is growing awareness of an accumulation of organ damage and disability which is building a “health debt” that will affect Canadians for decades to come. Calls in 2023 for an inquiry into the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic went unheeded, despite relevant precedent. Canada urgently needs a comprehensive review of its successes and failures to chart a better response in the near- and long-term. While Canada fared better than many comparators in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clearly still in a public health crisis. Infections are not only affecting Canadians’ daily lives but also eroding healthcare capacity. Post-COVID condition is having accumulating and profound individual, social, and economic consequences. An inquiry is needed to understand the current evidence underlying policy choices, identify a better course of action on various fronts, and build resilience. More must be done to reduce transmission, including a serious public education campaign to better inform Canadians about COVID and effective mitigations, especially the benefits of respirator masks. We need a national standard for indoor air quality to make indoor public spaces safer, particularly schools. Data collection must be more robust, especially to understand and mitigate the disproportionate impacts on under-served communities and high-risk populations. General confidence in public health must be rebuilt, with a focus on communication and transparency. In particular, the wide variation in provincial policies has sown mistrust: evidence-based policy should be consistent. Finally, Canada’s early success in vaccination has collapsed, and this development needs a careful post-mortem. A complete investigation of Canada’s response to the pandemic is not yet possible because that response is still ongoing and, while we have learned much, there remain areas of dispute and uncertainty. However, an inquiry is needed to conduct a rapid assessment of the current evidence and policies and provide recommendations on how to improve in 2025 and beyond as well as guidance for future pandemics.

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Concepts Keywords
Canada Canada
Daily COVID-19
Organ Government inquiry
Pandemic Health Policy
Vaccination Humans
Pandemics
Precautionary principle
Public Health
Public health
Public policy
SARS-CoV-2
SARS-CoV-2

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH COVID-19
disease MESH infections
drug DRUGBANK Tropicamide
disease MESH Post-COVID condition
drug DRUGBANK Medical air
disease IDO quality
drug DRUGBANK Spinosad
disease MESH uncertainty
pathway REACTOME Reproduction
drug DRUGBANK Coenzyme M
disease MESH hepatitis
disease IDO blood
drug DRUGBANK Ciclosporin
disease MESH emergency
disease MESH death
drug DRUGBANK Pentaerythritol tetranitrate
disease IDO infection
drug DRUGBANK Factor IX Complex (Human)
drug DRUGBANK Trestolone
disease MESH sequelae
disease MESH community spread
drug DRUGBANK Ritonavir
disease MESH heart attacks
disease MESH strokes
disease MESH influenza
disease MESH burnout
drug DRUGBANK Methylergometrine
drug DRUGBANK Water
disease IDO site
drug DRUGBANK Ademetionine
drug DRUGBANK Methyl isocyanate
disease MESH developmental disabilities

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