(File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Dawson Thompson

COVID Measures

City of Prince Albert to send ‘strong’ letter to province regarding COVID measures

Oct 13, 2021 | 5:00 PM

The City of Prince Albert is sending a ‘strong’ letter to the provincial government regarding provincial COVID-19 measures that are not ‘curbing the spread’ of the virus.

At the Sept. 7 city council meeting, Dr. Khami Chokani, North Central’s Medical Officer of Health advised Prince Albert councilors that the COVID-19 situation across the province would become worse if stronger policies are not made.

Due to a continuous rise of COVID-19 cases in the province, the city will be taking the advice of Dr. Chokani and other health professionals and will be putting pressure on the province with the letter.

“It is the provincial government who has real-time knowledge of the COVID crisis and the COVID numbers, and they have access to the medical health officers who are experts in the field,” Ward two councilor, Terra Lennox-Zepp told paNOW. “Dr. Chokani came to us and asked the city to implement increased measures to what the provincial government is enacting.

“This is a failure of the provincial government. Our government is not even enacting the minimum measures to make our medical health officers satisfied to protect citizens and our ability to provide health care. This is a failure.”

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When Dr. Chokani spoke to councilors, he had two measures he wanted to see accomplished. One was to save lives from a preventable death, and the other was to prevent a collapse of an overworked health care system.

“We are in a situation where the medical health officer comes to a municipality and says the measures that are currently being enacted are not enough,” Lennox-Zepp said. “I believe it is very important that on behalf of the citizens of our city, we need to be vocal to the Government of Saskatchewan in telling them of our concerns in these failures.

“And, that we want the provincial government to act in accordance with what the medical officers are asking for.”

She added that Saskatchewan is in a health crisis that has been created by decisions that the provincial government has made.

“This province is having more deaths, and is seeing more of an overburdened health care system,” Lennox-Zepp added. “This crisis has been created based on the choices this provincial government has made. We need them to make improved choices in the future, so we don’t have medical health officers coming to municipalities saying please do more than what the province is doing to help us.”

Greg Dionne, Mayor of Prince Albert says the letter will be made public and will be available for access on the city’s website.

“In the letter, I will be making it quite clear that they should get back involved before this totally gets out of hand,” Dionne said.

Councilors supported the initiative unanimously at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

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Dawson.thompson@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @dawsonthompson8