Health Minister Patty Hajdu responded Monday to a petition calling for the suspension of all flights to and from China amid fears about COVID-19 and saying that closing a border was "not effective at all" at controlling the spread of disease. She also said in the long term they can create a greater risk to public health, saying that China has been very open and sharing the sequence of the virus to allow other countries to do proper testing and if a border was closed, the transparency that allows countries to fight the virus would be gone.