安大略省审计长对省的COVID-19反应高度批评

[lindamy]

Ontario auditor general highly critical of province's COVID-19 response

Ontario's response to the COVID-19 pandemic was hampered by poor emergency preparedness, inadequate lab capacity and a disorganized public health system, according to a report issued Wednesday by Bonnie Lysyk, the province's auditor general.

"Ontario's response to COVID-19 in the winter and spring of 2020 was slower and more reactive relative to most other provinces and many other international jurisdictions," Lysyk says in the report.

The report looks at general and specific and finds fault in a number of areas, including: weaknesses in public health lab and information systems that were repeatedly flagged following the 2003 SARS crisis but which were never addressed; an "overly cumbersome" command structure for the COVID-19 response; delays in testing and regional public health unit responses to positive cases; and an order for all long-term care facility workers to wear masks on shift that didn't come until nearly a month after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.

With respect to the command structure — the development of which included a payment of $1.6 million to a consultant — Lysyk characterized the decision not to give its chief medical officer of health the lead role in its COVID-19 response as "unusual."

Health Minister Christine Elliott called the report a disappointment.

"We have different views on various aspects of her report," Elliott said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford scoffed, "I'm really proud that the auditor general just got a medical degree and became a doctor over the last year or so."

The auditor says a second special report on COVID-19, which will focus on health-related pandemic expenditures, personal protective equipment and long-term care, will be issued soon.

 

[lindamy]

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How Australia succeeded in lowering COVID-19 cases to near-zero​ ​

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When Australia was hit with a surge of COVID-19 cases in late July, just weeks after declaring victory against the first wave, it prompted one of the world's longest lockdowns in Melbourne, which closed virtually everything that wasn't a grocery store or hospital for nearly four months. Even when restrictions were eased, there was a nightly curfew and people weren't allowed to be more than five kilometres away from home. The approach has largely worked. The nation's recorded cases peaked at 739 on Aug. 5, and since then, the count has dwindled steadily and most Australian cities have gone weeks without a single new case. It has come at the cost of a million jobs nationwide and thousands of now-failed businesses, but Dr. Nancy Baxter, a Canadian who moved to Melbourne just before that city entered its first lockdown, says it was worth it. "You can't have a well-functioning economy with a raging pandemic. It's not an economy versus lives," Baxter, who runs the University of Melbourne's School of Population and Global Health. As an island nation, Australia has the ability to severely limit entry into the country. Canada, meanwhile, is highly reliant on commercial truck drivers to bring food and other goods from the United States, and they are among the essential workers exempt from quarantine requirements. "Australia is unique in that we can really control who comes in and out of the country," said Jason Dutton, another Canadian transplant in Melbourne. "We've gone about it the right way, going for the aggressive suppression to zero."​

Read more about the Australian response​

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Stay informed with the latest COVID-19 data.​

 

[向问天]

the development of which included a payment of $1.6 million to a consultant —

钱就是这样胡乱花的。