WorksafeBC was a crucial player in building a firewall against SARS and insisting on airborne protections because they took this threat to worker safety seriously
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Healthcare workers at VGH were trained to automatically go to the highest level of protection. Better safe than sorry! One expert said, “we’re the heretics” because of how unorthodox that approach was at the time
Because of Dr. Filiatrault’s team’s swift actions and WorksafeBC refusing to play games with workers’ heath, there was no transmission to any healthcare worker who treated the patient or to any other patients at VGH. Vancouver avoided an outbreak. Toronto on the other hand…
SARS exploited how unprepared Toronto was to handle the unexpected. Ontario didn’t have a pandemic plan. They didn’t have a good communication system for alerts like the BCCDC had, to warn Dr. Filiatrault. Healthcare workers were under-informed and under-protected. 44 people died
At North York General Hospital in Toronto, there were patients presenting with SARS-like illnesses but hospitals told workers it wasn’t SARS. They found out that it was actually SARS from a press conference weeks later. Dr. Bonnie Henry was the investigative lead for the outbreak
Right before the news conference admitting the SARS outbreak, Dr. Bonnie Henry was in Taipei explaining how Toronto had conquered SARS through good communication. One expert involved said “Nobody asked how do you know it’s over? It’s just amazing that everyone blew it.”
Workers had been right. But they still stepped up to contain SARS even if they felt lied to and betrayed. In the aftermath, Justice Campbell led the SARS Commission Report, investigating just what went so catastrophically wrong and how to prevent a similar tragedy in the future
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