Canada needs to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and take action before the next health emergency strikes, an expert panel of doctors and researchers say in a new independent report. "Most scientists feel that it's only a matter of time before we face something similar to what we went through these past five years," said Dr. Fahad Razak, one of the six experts who contributed to the report examining how scientific advice was developed and how research was co-ordinated.
"A lot of what we saw globally when we compared [pandemic] responses suggests that the preparedness is the critical part." The panel's report, called " The Time to Act is Now ," says disease surveillance, hospitalization data and research findings need to be communicated much more effectively between the provinces, the territories and the federal government. "The fragmented nature of how we govern this country, with separate decisions being made in provinces and territories and what's being done at the federal government [level], had really significant impact on how we responded to the pandemic," said Razak, an internal medicine specialist at St.
Michael's Hospital in Toronto who was the scientific director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. WATCH | National inquiry into COVID failures needed, experts say: Canada needs a national inquiry into COVID failures, experts say 1 year ago Duration 2:42 A series of new reports in the British Medical Journal say Canada was 'ill-prepared' and 'lacked co-ordin.