Canada’s federal auditor general is slamming the way Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) handled the controversial quarantine hotel program this year.
A report from auditor general Karen Hogan says PHAC had a hard time keeping track of whether travellers staying in quarantine hotels were actually there.
Global News reports that Hogan said PHAC “has no idea whether three-quarters of people who arrived by air earlier this year obeyed the requirement to quarantine at government-authorized hotels as part of the enforcement effort to limit the spread” of the corona virus.
“Though the Public Health Agency of Canada improved its results, this is not a success story,” Hogan said in a statement today (December 9). “The Agency’s inability to confirm whether more than a third of travellers complied with quarantine orders remains a significant problem.”
“First, the Public Health Agency of Canada ‘was either missing or unable to match’ the COVID-19 test results for 30 per cent of incoming travellers who arrived between February and June 2021,” Global reported. “Second, officials there had no idea whether 75% of the travellers arriving by air during that period complied with the requirement to quarantine at government-authorized hotels.”
“Because the agency did not have records of stay for 75 per cent of travellers who flew into Canada, it did not know whether those who were required to quarantine at government authorized hotels had complied,” Hogan said. “In addition, the agency did not reliably track whether air travellers who had been notified of positive COVID-19 tests had stayed at a government-authorized hotel as required.”
Earlier this year, travellers coming into Canada by air were required to pre-book and pre-pay for a three-day stay at a government-authorized hotel, where they were to remain in quarantine while waiting for their on-arrival test results, the CBC reports.
CTV News reports Hogan said that “not all air and land travellers actually completed their mandatory COVID-19 tests when coming back from international locations.”
“We found gaps in the verification of mandatory COVID-19 tests for incoming travellers: 14 per cent of travellers did not complete an on-arrival test, and 26 per cent did not complete a post-arrival test,” Hogans report states.
“With travel increasing and new variants continuing to emerge, the agency needs to improve the way it manages and enforces border control measures that are meant to limit the introduction of the COVID-19 virus and its variants into Canada,” Hogan said on Thursday. “I’m concerned that the department and agencies are unable to show us whether or not these border measures are effective border measures.”
