No Need to Change Canada’s Plans After WHO Declares Global Emergency: Officials

No Need to Change Canada’s Plans After WHO Declares Global Emergency: Officials
People wear masks at a metro station in Taipei, Taiwan, on Jan. 28, 2020. According to the Taiwan Centers of Disease Control, the eighth case diagnosed with the novel coronavirus has been confirmed in Taiwan. AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying
|Updated:

Canada is already taking the right steps to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, so there is no need to change things now that the World Health Organization has declared a global emergency over the outbreak, federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu says.

“The World Health Organization’s global emergency status is really ... about helping countries that do not have the same level of sophistication as Canada, or perhaps the United States, to protect their citizens if in fact they have a citizen who returns from China who is ill, or has been close to someone who has returned from China who is ill,” Hajdu said in Ottawa on Jan. 30.