REGINA -- A community leader in northern Saskatchewan is speaking up with concerns that his community, and others, we omitted from the province's pilot for distributing the COVID-19 vaccine.
According to the province’s Vaccine Delivery Plan released Wednesday, the vaccine will arrive in northern communities in Phase 1, set to start at the end of December. Phase 1 will follow the initial pilot phase that begins on December 15.
“I guess because of the change in policies and our capacity up here to receive the vaccine, we’re not considered on this first go around." Beauval Emergency Operations Centre Incident Commander Rick Laliberte said.
Phase 1 focuses on immunizing priority populations who are at a higher risk of exposure to the virus.
“We want to make sure that when we’re up there we can cover off all of the categories above and that’s why we have allocated that anybody of 50 years or older, or that’s in the healthcare areas or any of the other three categories that we’ll do them while we’re up there,” Minister of Health Paul Merriman said.
Due to the geographical distance of each northern community, Laliberte said he’s concerned about the logistics of administering the vaccine and feels the province needs to set up more infrastructure.
The province says plans are being made around the safe storage of vaccines, the distribution logistics and public communication of vaccine availability.
“We are working with our Indigenous partners to be able make sure that they are receiving the vaccine in the priorities that we have laid out with Dr. Shahab that dove-tails exactly what the federal government is looking for,” Merriman said.
“We want to be part of this. We’ve been at the forefront of this COVID response and we haven’t let go, these outbreaks are still happening and the vaccine might be to early of a celebration for us,” Laliberte said.
