Tag: Unite

Categories
Politics

Lawmakers Unite in Bipartisan Fury Over Afghanistan Withdrawal

Lawmakers Unite in Bipartisan Fury Over Afghanistan Withdrawal

Moderate Democrats are angry with the Biden administration for their dire plans to evacuate the Americans and their allies. Liberal Democrats, who have long tried to end military engagements around the world, grumble that the images from Kabul are damaging their cause.

And Republicans, who months ago hailed former President Donald J. Trump’s even faster schedule to end US military involvement in the nation’s longest war, have brushed aside their earlier encouragement to accuse President Biden of humiliating the nation.

If Mr Biden hoped to find cover from politicians from both parties who had achieved broad consensus on the withdrawal, he has found little so far.

Faced with images of panicked Afghans bullying Kabul airport and inundated with appeals from Afghans seeking refuge, some Democrats openly attacked their president’s performance on Monday.

“I’ve been asking the administration for a refugee evacuation plan for months,” said Seth Moulton, Rep., Democrat of Massachusetts and former Marine Corps captain. “I was very clear: ‘We need a plan. We need someone to be in charge. ‘ To be honest, we still haven’t really seen the plan. “

“You had the opportunity for weeks. They had an amazing coalition of liberal and conservative lawmakers ready to assist the government in this effort, ”continued Moulton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee. “In my opinion, this was not only a national security mistake, it was also a political mistake.”

Some Liberal Democrats made appearances on television broadcast by White House officials on Twitter ahead of Mr Biden’s speech to the nation at the White House in defense of the President. However, finding few vocal defenders, administrative aides distributed topics to talk to Democrats in Congress to bolster the president’s position.

The government said the collapse of the Afghan government and the resulting chaos were not indictments of US policies, but evidence that the only way to prevent a disaster would have been to increase the presence of American troops. And in response to critics who say the president was caught on the wrong foot, the topics of the conversation read: “The government knew that there was a possibility that Kabul could fall to the Taliban. It wasn’t inevitable. It was a possibility. “

Rep. Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, who has been one of the fiercest voices against the wars that followed the 11th attacks for more than two decades, added, “We’ve been there for 20 years, spent over $ 1 trillion and trained over 300,000 of the Afghan armed forces. “

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Marine officer who served in Helmand Province, argued that Mr Biden’s only possible options would be to increase the American military presence in Afghanistan as the deadline for withdrawal agreed by Mr Trump. came and went – or to “finally tell the American people the truth”.

“What I have heard from voters,” he said in an interview, “is that what we are seeing in Afghanistan is worrying, but that people appreciate the President’s integrity for emphasizing that there is no end there are. Twenty years has been a long time to give Afghan leaders time to sow the seeds of civil society and instead they have only sown the seeds of corruption and incompetence. “

Updated

Aug. 16, 2021, 3:50 p.m. ET

In private, the Liberal Democrats were appalled by the widening catastrophe that Afghan refugees were exposed to. And some worried that the images of chaos in Kabul would serve as a cudgel for restrictive Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, to crack down on Democrats pushing for permits to use military force to be revoked who were in 1991 before the Gulf War, in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, and in 2002 before the US invasion of Iraq.

The Democratic left flank has pushed for substantial cuts in military spending and the Department of Defense’s overseas operations, as well as a realignment of government priorities for poverty reduction, education and childcare. But they now have to grapple with indelible images of the cost of US withdrawal.

Rep. Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of Texas and former Navy SEAL, wielded that stick when he said of Fox and Friends on Monday, “We’re getting this because we’re focusing on hollow slogans like ‘Bring the Troops Home’ and ‘No Endless Get more. ‘”

Mr McConnell, who had been ruthless during Mr Trump’s tenure in his disdain for the former president’s desire to keep his campaign promise and withdraw troops from Afghanistan, pounded Mr Biden in a statement, saying that the nation’s enemies ” watch “embarrassment of a superpower that has been laid deep.”

“America’s two decades of engagement in Afghanistan have had many writers,” said McConnell. “Just like the strategic missteps along the way. But while the monumental collapse predicted by our own experts is happening in Kabul today, the responsibility rests directly on the shoulders of our current commander in chief. “

Few Republicans, however, were willing to allude to the role of one of Mr Biden’s predecessors – or that Mr Trump had supported an even faster withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and, in April, called ending the war “a wonderful and positive thing”. “

Rep. Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, accused Biden on Monday of “abandoning Trump’s peace plan and exit strategy and creating his own arbitrarily”. In February, he wrote to Mr Biden pleading with him to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan “in the coming weeks”.

But in a sign that lawmakers believed the withdrawal from Afghanistan was still supported by large American voters – at least for now – even some notoriously radical Republicans refrained from condemning the decision themselves.

“There is a difference between the decision to back out and the way that decision was carried out,” said Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, on Fox and Friends.

“Whatever you think of the initial decision, the execution of Joe Biden was ruthlessly negligent,” he said, adding that “everything” Biden “might have to wait a few more months” to begin the withdrawal.

The political ramifications of the chaos and possible bloodshed in Afghanistan are not clear either in next year’s mid-term congressional elections or in the 2024 presidential election. Mr Trump felt the political advantage of retreating when he signed a peace deal with the Taliban and even invited Taliban leaders to Camp David from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan ahead of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. (The idea was quickly foiled.)

As soon as the images of Kabul fade off television screens this week, relief that the war was over – at least for US troops – could be the dominant emotional outcome.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona and a former Marine who served in Iraq, said in a long statement on Twitter that the American public simply “stopped caring about Afghanistan years ago.”

“Our military has not abandoned Afghanistan. The American people have not abandoned Afghanistan, ”wrote Mr Gallego. “Hubris of us, the elites in Washington, DC, did that. We did not understand Afghanistan and we did not understand the will of the American public for a long commitment … again. “

Jonathan Weisman contributed to the coverage.

Categories
World News

NATO members unite to face evolving threats from Russia and China

NATO members unite to face evolving threats from Russia and China

U.S. President Joe Biden attends a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a NATO summit, at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, June 14, 2021.

Stephanie Lecocq | Reuters

WASHINGTON  —  NATO members vowed to address a range of traditional and evolving security challenges, including several posed by China, in a joint statement released Monday at the close of their summit.

“China’s growing influence and international policies can present challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance,” the statement, known as a communique, said. “We will engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the Alliance.”

The references to China represent a victory for President Joe Biden, who was attending his first NATO summit as president.

Biden arrived at the summit intent upon rallying NATO’s 30 member-strong alliance behind a security policy that confronts both new threats, like cyberwarfare and China, as well as traditional threats, like Russia’s military incursions into Eastern Europe.

But Beijing’s ambitious military buildup also received mention in the communique.

“China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal with more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems to establish a nuclear triad,” the communique said. 

Biden has said his administration will stand “shoulder to shoulder” with America’s closest allies, breaking sharply from his predecessor’s “America First” policy.

President Donald Trump attacked NATO on a regular basis, questioning both the relevancy and the effectiveness of the decades-old alliance.

By contrast, Biden is outspoken in his belief that NATO is a cornerstone of global stability and a crucial player in confronting these evolving threats.

Yet NATO’s pivot to China, as opposed to a laser focus on Russia, is not necessarily a welcome change for everyone.

Some of NATO’s smallest members, many located in Eastern Europe, believe that deterrence against Russian aggression should be the chief concern of the alliance’s security efforts.

Biden met with the leaders of several Balkan nations on Monday morning, as well as with Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda. The U.S. military maintains a significant presence in Poland that is widely viewed as a major deterrent to Russia.

In response to the threat of hybrid warfare that Russia poses, NATO member states opened the door to potentially invoking Article 5, the mutual defense agreement, in cases of destabilizing disinformation attacks against “political institutions” and “public opinion.”

To date, Article 5 has only been invoked once — in defense of the United States in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“We are enhancing our situational awareness and expanding the tools at our disposal to counter hybrid threats, including disinformation campaigns, by developing comprehensive preventive and response options,” the communique states.

Russia’s disinformation campaigns have hit Europe hard, notably ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum, during the 2017 protests in Catalonia, and before the 2019 European Parliament elections.

On Tuesday, Biden will travel to Geneva for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden is expected to raise many of the topics addressed in the NATO communique.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, attend the Tsinghua Universitys ceremony, at Friendship Palace on April 26, 2019 in Beijing, China.

Kenzaburo Fukuhara | Getty Images

A broader power struggle

Throughout his visit to Europe, Biden has framed the competition between Western democracies and both Russia and China as more than simply an economic or a military rivalry.

To the president, it is a battle over which system of governance will emerge as the world’s great power, Chinese-style authoritarianism or Western democracy and capitalism.

Both Moscow and Beijing regularly ignore the international rules and norms that govern trade, security, defense, labor and human rights. This constitutes a serious threat to NATO and to developing countries around the world.

In some ways, Biden’s approach to China is not that different from Trump’s.

Tensions between Beijing and Washington soared under the Trump administration, fueled by a trade war and barriers preventing Chinese technology companies from doing business in the United States.

But Biden has said his approach to China would differ from his predecessor’s in that he would work more closely with allies in order to mount pushback against Beijing.

“We will confront China’s economic abuses,” Biden said in a recent speech. “But we’re also ready to work with Beijing when it’s in America’s interest to do so. We’ll compete from a position of strength by building back better at home and working with our allies and partners.”

Biden’s message has been warmly welcomed by NATO member leaders, following four years under Trump during which the United States was a thorn in the side of the alliance.

Trump repeatedly attacked NATO during his presidency, accusing it of being irrelevant and impotent. He even threatened to pull the United States out of the alliance.

Categories
Politics

To Counter China’s Belt-and-Highway, Biden Tries to Unite G7

To Counter China's Belt-and-Road, Biden Tries to Unite G7

PLYMOUTH, England – President Biden on Saturday urged the nations of Europe and Japan to counter China’s growing economic and security influence by providing hundreds of billions in funding to developing countries as an alternative to building new roads, railways, ports and communications networks in Beijing offer.

It was the first time the world’s richest nations discussed organizing a direct alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s overseas loan and investment plan that now spans Africa, Latin America and, hesitantly until it has spread to Europe itself. But the White House made no financial commitments, and there is sharp disagreement between the United States and its allies over how to respond to China’s rising power.

Mr Biden has made the challenge of an emerging China and a disruptive Russia at the heart of a foreign policy aimed at building democracies around the world as bulwarks against the spread of authoritarianism. For its part, Beijing has pointed to the US’s poor response to the pandemic and divisive American policies – particularly the January 6 uprising in the Capitol – as a sign that democracy is failing.

In scope and ambition, China’s development efforts far surpass the Marshall Plan, the United States’ program to rebuild Europe after World War II. At the Summit of the Group of Seven, discussions on Saturday about how to counteract this mirrored the debate in the West over whether to see China as a partner, a competitor, an adversary or an absolute security threat.

It is far from clear that the wealthy democracies will be able to come up with a comprehensive answer.

The plan described by the White House appeared to bring together existing projects in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and encourage private funding. An information sheet distributed to reporters named it “Build Back Better for the World,” with roots in Mr. Biden’s campaign theme – B3W for short, a game about China’s BRI.

He stressed the environment, anti-corruption efforts, the free flow of information and funding conditions that would allow developing countries to avoid excessive debt. One of the criticisms of Belt and Road is that the nations that sign it become dependent on China, which gives Beijing too much leverage over them.

It was a sign of growing concern about the ubiquitous Chinese surveillance that the UK hosts of this year’s G7 meeting cut all Internet and Wi-Fi connections in the room where the leaders met and so they away from uncoupled from the outside world.

Leaders broadly agree that China is using its investment strategy to both strengthen its state-owned enterprises and build a network of commercial ports and communication systems through Huawei, over which it would have significant control. But officials emerging from the meeting said Germany, Italy and the European Union are clearly concerned about risking their huge trade and investment deals with Beijing or accelerating what has increasingly taken on the tone of a new Cold War.

Mr Biden used the meeting to advance his argument that the fundamental struggle in the post-pandemic era will be democracy versus autocracies.

The first test could be whether he can convince the Allies to refuse participation in projects that rely on forced labor. It is unclear, American officials said what language about rejecting goods or investing in such projects would be included in the meeting’s final communiqué, which will be released on Sunday.

But the meeting comes just one day after Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken, who is traveling here with Mr. Biden, told his Chinese counterpart in a telephone conversation that the United States is actively opposing “ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing” of Muslims in Xinjiang in far west China and “the deterioration of democratic norms” in Hong Kong. The European heads of state and government have largely avoided this terminology.

The divisions on how to view China help explain why the West has not yet found a coordinated response to the Belt and Road. A recent study by the Council on Foreign Relations described Washington’s own reactions as a “scattershot,” a mixture of modest adjustments by Congress to rules governing the Export-Import Bank to compete with high-tech Chinese loans and efforts to get Huawei to China’s telecommunications, outlaw champion.

The risk to American strategy is that dealing with a patchwork of separate programs – and Western insistence on good environmental and human rights practices – may seem less attractive to developing countries than Beijing’s all-in-one package of finance and new technology .

“Many BRI countries appreciate the speed with which China can move from planning to construction,” said the council report, written by a bipartisan group of China experts and former US officials.

These countries, she added, also value China’s “willingness to build what host countries want instead of telling them what to do and the ease with which to deal with a single group of builders, financiers and government officials.”

Still, Mr Biden feels an opening as European nations have begun to understand the risks of reliance on Chinese supply chains and watch China’s reach expand into their own backyards.

Britain, which once pursued arguably the most China-friendly policies in Europe, has firmly stood behind the American hard line, especially with regard to Huawei, which the US sees as a security threat. After trying to accommodate Huawei, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that it was ripping older Huawei devices from its networks.

Biden in Europe

Updated

June 12, 2021, 7:11 a.m. ET

Germany, for which China has become the number 1 market for Volkswagen and BMW, remains committed to its commitment and is profoundly opposed to a new Cold War. It has launched decisions about the use of Huawei and other Chinese-made network devices after Chinese officials threatened to retaliate by banning the sale of German luxury cars in China.

Italy became the first member of the G7 to join the “Belt and Road” in 2019. It then had to resign in part under pressure from NATO allies who feared that Italian infrastructure, including the telecommunications network, would depend on Chinese technology.

When China sent face masks and ventilators to a desperate Italy during the Covid outbreak, an Italian official told his fellow Europeans stressed that the country would remember who its friends were after the pandemic.

France has not joined Belt and Road, despite welcoming Chinese investment in the country and not banning Huawei from its wireless network. Relations with China have cooled after President Emmanuel Macron criticized Beijing for its lack of transparency about the origins of the coronavirus.

“America would be well served if the European Union works together and defines a coherent China strategy,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador to the USA. “Interests are not served well if there is a German China strategy, a French China strategy and a British China strategy.”

That’s easier said than done. Britain moved closer to the US under pressure from former President Donald J. Trump – less because it changed its view of China’s strategy or security risks than because it feared being isolated from its key ally after Brexit.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who firmly believes in her commitment to China, will resign in a few months. But not much is likely to change in Germany’s politics, especially if her successor as CDU leader Armin Laschet replaces her in the Chancellery. He is considered to be in step with Ms. Merkel.

France is a different story. Macron faces a formidable challenge from the populist right in next year’s elections. Right-wing leader Marine LePen has vowed to counter China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region.

“Whenever you have one of these meetings, you will see a fluid movement in one country or another,” said Simon Fraser, a former top official in the UK Foreign Office. But he added: “There is a lack of cohesion on the European side that needs to be addressed”.

Italy is a good test case of how China has tried to build influence in Europe. Since joining Belt and Road, Rome has signed nearly two dozen agreements with Beijing, ranging from tax rules to sanitary rules for pork exports. However, Italy also vetoed a 5G deal between Huawei and one of its telecommunications companies.

At the heart of China’s investment in Europe is a rail network that would connect its factories on the Pacific Ocean to London – a project China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang once called an expressway to Europe. Italy, which has a terminus on the route, welcomes the investment as a tonic for its ailing economy.

But Britain’s relations with China are frozen. The government imposed sanctions on China’s treatment of the Uyghur population and offered residency and access to citizenship to more than 300,000 British foreign passport holders in Hong Kong after China imposed a draconian national security law on the former British colony.

Analysts say China’s human rights record is hardening European attitudes across the board. The European Parliament refused to ratify a landmark investment agreement backed by Germany as China stubbornly responded to sanctions for its treatment of the Uyghurs. China has sanctioned ten EU politicians.

There is also evidence that Mr Biden realizes that his aggressive language about China – as the great adversary in a fateful struggle between democracies and autocracies – is uncomfortable for many Europeans. He largely avoided this framing in the days leading up to his European tour and spoke more generally about the need to promote democracies in a competitive world.

For some analysts, this opens the door to a hopeful scenario in which the United States and Europe are moving towards each other, moderating the most extreme aspects of the confrontation towards reconciliation in each other’s approaches.

“America becomes more realistic from the hard line to China, while Europe becomes more realistic from the soft line,” said Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, a think tank in London.

Categories
Politics

Biden calls on U.S. to unite towards hate concentrating on Asian People

Biden calls on U.S. to unite against hate targeting Asian Americans

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called on the US to unite against hatred and speak out against violence against Asian Americans in a speech in Atlanta on Friday.

“Harm to one of us is harm to all of us,” said Harris, the country’s first Asian-American vice president.

The public statements came after the President and Vice President met with Asian American leaders in Georgia after the Atlanta area rampage that killed eight people, including six Asian women.

While law enforcement was still investigating the suspect’s motive, both Biden and Harris realized: the shootings are taking place amid mounting discrimination and violence against Asians and Asian Americans, and the country must work together to address the problem.

“Hate and violence are often hidden in public. There is often silence,” said Biden. “Our silence is complicit. We cannot be complicit. We have to express ourselves. We have to act.”

“It is up to all of us, all of us together, to stop it,” said the president, emphasizing that “words have consequences”.

Biden called on Congress to pass hate crime law to combat the rise in violence against Asian Americans during the Covid pandemic and the law against violence against women.

“I believe with every fiber in my being there are simply some core values ​​and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans, and one of them stands together against hatred, against racism – the ugly poison that has long plagued our nation . ” Said Biden.

President Joe Biden speaks after meeting executives from the Georgian Asian-American and Pacific islander communities at Emory University in Atlanta on Friday, March 19, 2021 while Vice President Kamala Harris listens.

Patrick Semansky | AP

The president, who himself mourned the loss of family members, offered words of comfort to the families of those who lost their lives in the shootings.

“I assure you the one you lost will always be with you,” said Biden. “The day will come when her memory will bring a smile to your face before it brings a tear to your eye, incredible as this is. It will be a while. And I promise you it will come. When it does doing that, it’s the day you know you will make it. “

The meeting with Asian American lawmakers and community advocates was held at Emory University, where Biden and Harris later made their comments.

The Atlanta visit, Biden and Harris’ first trip together since taking office, was originally part of a national tour that announced the passage of the $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid package. The White House announced Thursday that it would postpone the planned political event after the deadly shootings and focus on increasing discrimination and violence against Asian Americans.

The President and Vice-President will also meet with experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for information on the Covid pandemic.

Biden and Harris also planned to meet with proxy and former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams during their visit to Atlanta, a White House official told NBC News.

The official said Abrams “played a leading role in accessing voting and protecting voters, and she will be an important partner in taking important action in this important area in the future.”

Abrams is widely credited for her years of electoral mobilization efforts that fueled Georgia’s democratic victories in the November presidential runoff and January Senate runoff.

The President and Vice President meeting with Abrams comes as civil rights activists in Georgia roll back voting restrictions proposed by Republican lawmakers. The activists are calling on Biden and Congress to pass federal voting rights, such as the For the People Act introduced in the Senate on Wednesday.

Categories
Business

‘Like Wartime’: Canadian Corporations Unite to Begin Mass Virus Testing

‘Like Wartime’: Canadian Companies Unite to Start Mass Virus Testing

TORONTO – A consortium of some of the country’s largest companies has launched a rapid testing program to protect its 350,000 employees and publish a playbook for business Canada on how to safely reopen.

The program is considered the first of its kind in the group of 7 industrialized nations and has already attracted the attention of the Biden government.

The 12 companies, including Canada’s largest airline and grocery chain, have been working together for four months. Creation of a 400-page instruction manual for performing rapid antigen tests in various work settings. They started testing the tests in their workplaces this month and expect to expand the program to 1,200 small and medium-sized businesses.

They also plan to share their test results with state health officials to significantly increase the number of tests in the country and provide an informal study on the spread of the virus among asymptomatic people.

“It’s like wartime – people come together to do something that is in everyone’s interest,” said Marc Mageau, senior vice president of refining and logistics at Suncor Energy, the country’s largest oil producer, who conducted the tests this month introduced his employees.

The program faces some inherent challenges: After an outbreak last year in the White House, antigen tests were discovered that induce both false negative results and a false sense of security. They are also in short supply in Canada. Some experts feel that they should be reserved for schools and nursing homes rather than non-essential businesses.

While vaccines are considered the world’s best weapon to fight the pandemic, most experts believe it will take months, if not a full year, for Canada to reach the vaccination levels that will allow workplaces to safely return to their pre-Covid surgeries .

Canada is in a second wave of pandemics that has driven infections to record levels and deaths to around 19,800. In response, many parts of the country are on lockdown, restaurants, theaters, and non-essential retail stores are closed.

Canada’s economy contracted about 5 percent during the pandemic. Some industries such as real estate and manufacturing have performed well, but those that depend on public crowds, such as entertainment and hospitality, have seen employment decline.

“Think about downtown Toronto: nobody is there anymore. Entertainment – everything is stopped, ”said Joshua Gans, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto who served as advisor to and is the author of the project “The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economy of Covid-19.”

“It is time to figure out how to actually reopen the closed sectors,” he said.

The consortium companies were brought together in the spring by Ajay Agrawal, founder of the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab. That helps science and technology start-ups. They were inspired by the most Canadian muses: Margaret Atwood, the author.

“How soon can we get a cheap, self-administered test at the drugstore?” Ms. Atwood asked business leaders and others who were tasked with brainstorming ideas for economic recovery during the pandemic during a virtual meeting last May.

The problem, the group noted, was the “information gap” – with no way of telling who an asymptomatic carrier might be, everyone was treated as a potential threat.

Ms. Atwood envisioned something like a home pregnancy test.

“That would be a game changer,” she said.

When the group realized that the government was overwhelmed by the health crisis, they decided to take on the task themselves and form a consortium led by the Creative Destruction Lab.

The group focused on antigen testing because of its speed, price, and utility: you can get results in minutes, don’t require a lab, and can cost anywhere from $ 5 to $ 20 in Canada.

Updated

Jan. 30, 2021, 8:47 p.m. ET

However, they are less accurate and produce more false negative results than the gold standard polymerase chain reaction or PCR tests, which can cost 20 times as much. The three antigen tests approved for use in Canada characterize between 84 percent and 96.7 percent of those infected with the virus.

In the UK, antigen tests used in a mass testing campaign identified only two-fifths of the coronavirus cases detected by PCR testing.

Because of this, many experts in Canada and elsewhere initially argued that it would be wiser to expand PCR testing. However, as the pandemic spread and the country failed to meet its testing goals, that thinking changed, said Dr. Irfan Dhalla, co-chair of the Canadian Advisory Panel on Testing and Screening for Covid-19, which recommended increasing the country’s use of rapid tests.

“A rapid antigen test is clearly better than no test at all, as long as it is not used as a free pass, ”said Dr. Dhalla. “Whether it’s a job or a school, you still have to wear a mask and physically distance yourself as much as possible.”

In the long term, the members of the consortium hope that the testing program will help reduce infection rates enough to allow crowded restaurants and boardroom meetings to take place again. In the meantime, however, they plan to use the tests as an extra layer of protection – in addition to wearing masks, social distancing, and pre-screening of staff so those with symptoms can stay home.

The consortium companies also test their employees twice a week to increase the likelihood that positive cases will be picked up.

“Everyone is looking for a silver bullet. We realized that it doesn’t exist. It’s not, ”admitted Laura Rosella, professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto and advisor to the project.

In September, more than 100 consortium employees began working together at the expense of their companies to come up with a plan. Two retired generals volunteered to manage the logistics.

The coronavirus outbreak>

Things to know about testing

Confused by Coronavirus Testing Conditions? Let us help:

    • antibody: A protein produced by the immune system that can recognize and attach to certain types of viruses, bacteria or other invaders.
    • Antibody test / serology test: A test that detects antibodies specific to the coronavirus. About a week after the coronavirus infects the body, antibodies start appearing in the blood. Because antibodies take so long to develop, an antibody test cannot reliably diagnose an ongoing infection. However, it can identify people who have been exposed to the coronavirus in the past.
    • Antigen test: This test detects parts of coronavirus proteins called antigens. Antigen tests are quick and only take five minutes. However, they are less accurate than tests that detect genetic material from the virus.
    • Coronavirus: Any virus that belongs to the Orthocoronavirinae virus family. The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is known as SARS-CoV-2.
    • Covid19: The disease caused by the new coronavirus. The name stands for Coronavirus Disease 2019.
    • Isolation and quarantine: Isolation is separating people who know they have a contagious disease from those who are not sick. Quarantine refers to restricting the movement of people who have been exposed to a virus.
    • Nasopharyngeal smear: A long, flexible stick with a soft swab that is inserted deep into the nose to collect samples from the space where the nasal cavity meets the throat. Samples for coronavirus tests can also be obtained with swabs that do not go as deep into the nose – sometimes called nasal swabs – or with mouth or throat swabs.
    • Polymerase chain reaction (PCR): Scientists use PCR to make millions of copies of genetic material in a sample. With the help of PCR tests, researchers can detect the coronavirus even when it is scarce.
    • Viral load: The amount of virus in a person’s body. In people infected with the coronavirus, viral loads can peak before symptoms, if any.

The group was registered as a nonprofit called the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium in November, with each company contributing $ 230,000 in operating costs.

The employees work in teams Researched around 50 different antigen tests around the world, analyzed what was required for a screening program – from staff to number of dresses – and estimated the total cost.

The resulting 400-page user guide includes everything from an example of an employee invitation to participate in the program and a standard consent form, to a detailed shopping list of materials required to run a program.

One of the hurdles was getting tests. They had to get them from the government because they are not yet widely available in Canada and the demand from schools and nursing homes is high.

“Let’s do tests there first,” said Dr. Dhalla, referring to schools, nursing homes and important workplaces. “As we gain experience, we can talk about getting people back to work where working from home is an option.”

In January, five companies began testing the program in environments as diverse as pharmacies and radio stations. So far, around 400 employees have volunteered and nearly 1,900 tests have been carried out. According to Sonia Sennik, the executive director of the Creative Destruction Lab and avid quarterback of the project, only three have made positive returns.

“They didn’t go to work and they might spread something,” said Ms. Sennik. “We interrupted the transmission chain three times.”

The companies found the program reduced employees’ fear of not only getting to work but returning home every day, she said.

“I’m relieved,” said Mohamed Gaballa, an Air Canada official who took the test during a break at Toronto Pearson International Airport. This came up within 15 minutes by email: “Your screening result is negative. You can go on with your day. “

“This has been a missing piece in Canada for far too long,” said Dan Kelly, president and chief executive officer of Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses that represents 110,000 small and medium-sized businesses.

Small businesses face a lot more hurdles to implementing such a program, even if dodging a 400-page manual, he said. There is the cost of the tests, but more importantly the staff to manage them.

Mr. Kelly envisioned that the program would not work in restaurants and busy stores – places where unscreened customers far exceeded the number of employees screened unless they were planned to be tested. But in kitchens, small warehouses, small manufacturing facilities, and offices, “these tests could be very helpful,” he said.

“Under normal circumstances, the idea of ​​small businesses doing employee testing for everything would be a fantasy,” said Kelly, who sits on the federal government’s industry advisory group on Covid-19 testing. “But in this case, given the desperation to remain or remain open among small business owners, there is a potential appetite for it.”