Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has cautioned that the border with the U.S. would remain largely closed for the foreseeable future as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
Trudeau and President Donald Trump agreed in mid-March to close the shared border to recreational travel and tourism while exempting trade. Despite talk in the U.S. of working toward reopening parts of the economy, Trudeau suggested during a Thursday press briefing that the restrictions would remain in place for some time.
“There’s a recognition that as we move forward there will be special thought given to this relationship. But at the same time, we know that there is a significant amount of time, still, before we can talk about loosening such restrictions,” the prime minister said.
His remark came a day after Trump suggested that the border could reopen sooner than later. “It will be one of the early borders to be released,” the president said during a Wednesday press conference.
Newsweek reached out to the White House and the State Department for comment but did not hear back before publication.
Canada first banned all foreigners from entering the country on March 16 but initially exempted U.S. citizens. “We will be denying entry to Canada to people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents,” Trudeau said at the time. Just a few days later, the U.S. and Canada agreed to close their mutual border.
As the U.S. has become the global epicenter of the pandemic, with nearly 650,000 confirmed cases as of Thursday afternoon, Canada has managed until now to maintain a relatively low number of infections. Currently, the nation has just over 30,000 confirmed cases and 1,229 deaths. About a third of the Canadians who have contracted the coronavirus have already recovered.
Meanwhile, Trump and other U.S. leaders have begun discussing how and when the country can begin safely reopening parts of the economy. But public health officials and economic experts have cautioned that this will depend on the prevalence of testing, as well as the ability to track and isolate individuals who may be infected.
“The president will announce a plan in the works to drastically increase the capacity for state and local health departments to do core public health work like testing people, doing contact tracing,” an unidentified top government official told The New York Times. “We want to beef up state capacity to be able to perform core functions, so that if and when we start to open the country back up, we don’t have a resurgence of cases to require the country to shut back down.”
On Thursday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state has been the hardest hit by the outbreak in the U.S., extended his stay-at-home order until May 15.
