Premier Scott Moe. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME file photo)

By CKOM News

Premier’s ‘roadmap to recovery’ to be announced Tuesday

May 4, 2021 | 10:02 AM

Premier Scott Moe is about to tell you when life will return to normal.

He told reporters at the legislature Monday that during the typical Tuesday 3 p.m. COVID news conference, “we are going to offer a very clear roadmap to recovery.”

The plan will be based on vaccination rates and the continued hope that as many people in the province as possible get vaccinated.

“The metric that we should be really looking for and the metric that other nations watch closely — because it drives all the other metrics — is the vaccination rate. And ultimately, we have had an age-based priority here in Saskatchewan and that age-based program continues and soon we will have vaccines for everyone 18 and above,” Moe explained.

“Ultimately your vaccination rate — and this is proven in Israel, the U.K. and even in the United States, where they had far higher COVID rates that we had in Canada and in Saskatchewan — the vaccination rate determines all the other metrics. We are very ambitiously continuing with our vaccination effort.”

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Moe didn’t describe exactly what metrics the vaccination percentage will determine, saying that’s what the roadmap released Tuesday will detail.

“We will talk about it,” he said. “We are going to talk about the metrics with respect to our vaccination rates and how that is going to impact what we can and cannot have access to in our communities over the weeks ahead.

“If you look at what they did exactly in the U.K., you didn’t wake up one morning, hit a certain percentage and bang, you open everything. I don’t think anyone is expecting that. This is more like turning up the lights with a dimmer switch and starting to achieve a number of metrics that will be based on vaccination rates, achieving those metrics as we go along.

“We will be asking Saskatchewan people to go out and get vaccinated because those vaccination rates allow us to achieve the tiers that we want to be able to throttle what we are doing in our communities, what it would take to get back to normal (and) start to enjoy a life we used to enjoy pre-COVID.”

As of Monday, 82 per cent of Saskatchewan residents over the age of 60 have received their first dose of a COVID vaccine. As well, 64 per cent of those 40 and over and 43 per cent of those 18 and over have received their first doses.

“What you will see in the roadmap is some conversation around some very direct metrics — what type of vaccination levels we need to meet, not at certain times, but what we need to meet to move forward with a number of opportunities in our communities,” Moe said.

“I think Saskatchewan people will rise to that challenge. It will mirror what you have seen in other countries where they have started to get into that 40, 45 per cent vaccination level and then been able to have a very different conversation than the one we have been seeing in the last 14 months. I am very positive where we are going.”

The news conference will be carried live Tuesday on 980 CJME and 650 CKOM at 3 p.m.