It seems like Canada also knew about it and was preparing in Januari. The problem was also to get the administration to react.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/coronavirus-pandemic-covid-canadian-military-intelligence-wuhan-1.5528381
A small, specialized unit within the Canadian military's intelligence branch began producing detailed warnings and analysis about the emergence of the deadly novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China in early January, CBC News has learned.
The medical intelligence (MEDINT) cell within Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) is tucked away on the edges of the country's security and defence establishment.
It has a mandate to track global health trends and contagion outbreaks to predict how they'll affect military operations, but its assessments are heavily influenced by reports from the Five Eyes Intelligence partners, including the U.S. military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI).
For at least one of the country's leading intelligence experts, the fact that the unit was tracking the COVID-19 outbreak and reporting on it raises serious questions about information-sharing within the federal government — and its possible failure to heed early warning signs.
Groan, part of the failure to alert and communicate came down to outdated software...
The Liberal government of former prime minister Paul Martin embedded within its foreign policy statement a plan to beef up the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), a network of health professionals whose job — according to its website — is to "rapidly detect, identify, assess, prevent and mitigate threats to human health."
It was supposed to operate in conjunction with the WHO and is headquartered in Ottawa.
Wark said that, despite the best intentions, the network is hobbled by other countries' reluctance to share data and the accuracy of open-sourced media reports in a country where an outbreak occurs.
And a 2018 article, archived in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, reported that the GPHIN was in need of modernization and had turned to the National Research Council in Canada to "rejuvenate" its software, systems and tools.
Wark said Canada's pandemic early warning system is a shambles.
"We put all our faith in a system of open reporting through the WHO. We should instead have applied the old adage — trust but verify."
It will all be analyzed, the documents are public
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/documents-reveal-glimpse-into-canada-s-early-covid-19-plans-1.4886560
In early January, the government went from saying the novel virus was being “actively monitored” with no confirmed cases in Canada. By mid-March, the government had repatriated citizens, assessed the national stockpile of supplies, and was having to update public health advice with the suggestion that up to 70 per cent of the country could contract the disease.
These evolutions in policy, reacting to the evolving understanding of the never-before-documented virus are documented in part, through hundreds of pages of departmentally-redacted documents obtained by CTVNews.ca. The documents offer a glimpse into some of the early-stage federal conversations and policy decisions made in the months after the novel coronavirus was identified and labelled COVID-19.
For example
As of Feb. 10 an assessment of the stockpiles of personal protective equipment was underway, and attempts had already begun to procure more supplies, a briefing note for a Hajdu call with her counterparts indicates.
Closing everything down before people first seeing what was happening to Italy would have been the correct thing to do, but nobody dared. Being better prepared would have helped as well, yet it wouldn't have made much of a difference to the size of the outbreak. The big mistake Ford made (Ontario) was to tell people to go enjoy March break. BC had the foreknowledge of seeing what happened in Quebec, people returning with symptoms. (Quebec went first, then Ontario, then BC who told people to stay home) And unsurprisingly, Quebec is off worst, Ontario follows and BC is nearly over it. That March break holiday had a big effect, but it must have been spreading here earlier than that.
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