Hajdu: Sidelining of pandemic alert system an 'administrative' decision

Power Play: Pandemic alert system sidelined The feds are ordering a review into the sidelining of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network. Health Minister Patty Hajdu weighs in.

OTTAWA — Health Minister Patty Hajdu says the decision to sideline the intelligence network that informs Canada’s response to disease outbreaks was an "administration" one made by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and that no one was involved at the political level.

Hajdu ordered a review of the decision this week, after a Globe and Mail investigation reported in late July that the research unit, the Global Public Health Network (GPHIN), was silenced last year.

"No one at the political level knew that it had been sidelined," Hajdu told CTV Power Play Host Evan Solomon during Thursday's episode.

"It was an administration decision, made by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and by the leader at that time of the agency who had decided that it would be better for the information network to focus its efforts on more domestic issues and domestic concerns."

The GPHIN, which is managed by the Public Health Agency of Canada's (PHAC) Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, was formed in the late 1990s in collaboration with the World Health Organization to "rapidly detect, identify, assess, prevent and mitigate threats to human health."

Hajdu said that when she became minister of health, she was "completely unaware" that the information network even existed, nor that it had "changed its focus so significantly."

Still, the health minister assured that there were "many different ways to understand" what was happening with COVID-19 in the early days of the outbreak.

"We knew very early about COVID-19, the risk that it posed to human health, and of course were watching it very carefully in late December, early January. When everybody returned from holidays I was fully briefed. So we knew about the pandemic," Hajdu said.

She did, however, acknowledge that the GPHIN provided information that would have been "helpful" in understanding the pandemic "much earlier."

"They were able to scan, let's say, less prominent newspapers, regional newspapers, cultural newspapers, they were able to scan social media to be engaged in chat rooms with perhaps people closer to the ground," Hajdu said.

"So they would have been able to probably understand details of how the pandemic was unfolding in China and other countries much earlier, and I think that kind of granular information is always helpful when you’re trying to understand especially a new pathology like COVID-19."

During a Monday press conference, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam welcomed the news of the review into the sidelining of the organization.

"I think the president of the agency and certainly myself and the Minister in particular will look towards what the findings would be, but with the purpose that we strengthen early warning globally and whatever Canada can contribute to that would be very helpful," Tam said.

During the same press conference, Tam confirmed that GPHIN was the body that informed her about the cluster of cases of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan in late December.

With files from CTV News' Sarah Turnbull