Yes, the coronavirus is a threat to health, but we should not panic

There is still the chance the virus could mutate into something more dangerous, but right now, all that is speculation and sensationalism: the coronavirus is not Ebola.

Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Howard Njoo, Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Health Minister Patty Hajdu and Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne provide an update on Canada’s response to the coronavirus in Ottawa on Feb. 3. Unlike epidemics of the past, Canadian authorities have had enough advance warning to know how to respond, writes Andrew Caddell. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY ANDREW CADDELL

February 5, 2020

OTTAWA—In the fall of 1996, I had just started work at the World Health Organization in Geneva as an information officer. Within a few days of my arrival, there was word of the possibility of cholera in the camps in then-Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the Great Lakes Region, borde...

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