Health Minister Patty Hajdu.
Canada’s health minister is addressing concerns the Chinese-Canadian community is being targetted unfairly similarly to the early 2000s SARS outbreak in Toronto.
Patty Hajdu says one of the sad facts of a pandemic outbreak is that often they exhibit themselves first in a population in a foreign country.
“Sometimes that ends up racializing that particular outbreak and we saw this in SARS, especially in Toronto and the Chinese Canadian community felt the significant impacts of discrimination and fear,” Hajdu added.
The health minister reminds the public that this disease has been found in all parts of the world and we should not let these types of situations divide us as Canadians.
Canada has had seven cases of coronavirus and Hajdu notes all of the cases have recovered or have been cleared of the virus and so we are very comfortable with the processes we are using to ensure that people know what the symptoms are.
