Coronavirus: Canada Closes Border to Foreigners, Americans Exempted

Eve, this virus is here, and here to stay. It's coming your way whether today, tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Currently they are trying to SLOW the hit so that medical facilities can handle the valid Corona patients and the normal sick or injured people. The goal is not to overwhelm hospitals all at once - especially with people who may simply have the cold or sniffles (or totally well) who we KNOW will be flooding their local ER.

This is easier said then done. At this time of year Canada gets 80% of their fruit and vegetable from the USA or Mexico, so there would still be many thousands of trucks per day that need to cross the border. We are at the beginning of an unprecedented health crisis, and 50% of our medical supplies come from the USA. Anyways, the virus is already here, so closing of borders, even screening people coming in, will do nothing but give us a false sense of security that in the end does more harm than good.

- I happened to see unusual patterns of flights in/out of Havana Cuba today, March 17.
THREE British Air 777 enroute LHR-HAV with 9000 series flight numbers. (not typical flights). Plus widebodies from AMS, DUS, MUC, CDG, and yes, Alitalia from Rome FCO to Havana. Also note the US flights operating HAV-MIA HAV-JFK, etc. 1) Are the EU folks merely sunseekers? 2) Has Havana just become a new Toronto, offering a way to bypass US ban on travel from EU to USA ? 3) Or are these G7 coordinated flights for repatriation plus transporting medical supplies. Don't know the answer, but heavier than normal traffic patterns. Can search Flightaware for HAV or MUHA , then try the map picture

The US has also preformed more tests (as of time of writing) and, as far as I'm aware, had stricter qualifications for testing regarding to symptoms (again, as of time of writing; please correct me if I'm wrong about this). The US population is also considerably higher than that of Canada.

This implies that, while the number of confirmed cases in the US is higher, the active percentage of people infected is completely unknown and not comparable between countries.

The number of confirmed cases DOES NOT EQUAL the number of people infected in any given country.

All that said, just because the boarder is still open, the population of both countries needs to be considerate and practice social distancing. Unnecessary travel & gatherings (intra or international) should be avoided until this whole thing blows over. This is for your own safety & well-being as well as the safety & well-being of others.