Sask. Premier Scott Moe tests positive for COVID-19, said he didn't know he had been infected
Premier Scott Moe said he had no idea he might have had COVID-19 as he met with reporters on Wednesday.
He took a routinely scheduled rapid test Thursday morning and it showed positive.
The premier tweeted “I’m feeling fine and will be self isolating and working from home for the next five days.”
Moe removed his mask at the news conference, which is permissible for television purposes. A sign language interpreter stood a few feet away and also removed her mask. The province’s chief medical health officer kept his mask on as did everyone else present.
Earlier this week, the premier attended a school function in La Loche. He tested negative before embarking on the trip north.
Moe is triple vaccinated and is the second premier to test positive in the past two weeks. New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs has also had to self isolate.
Jason Kindrachuk, a researcher into emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said no one can let their guard down.
“Yeah listen, we’re in different time’s right? I think the major message is that right now Omicron is moving through our populations exceedingly quickly. People that are vaccinated still have to take precautions. We need to be very considerate that vaccines are a part of the equation but they’re not the 100% fail safe of the equation. We still have to rely on distancing. We still have to rely on types of masks that we are using and ultimately we still have to rely on how we’re feeling,” he said.
None of the students at the La Loche School are considered close contacts.
Those who travelled or met with the premier have been advised to self monitor.
No one else has tested positive.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Online diary: Buffalo gunman plotted attack for months
The white gunman accused of massacring 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket wrote as far back as November about staging a livestreamed attack on African Americans.

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre denounces 'white replacement theory'
Pierre Poilievre is denouncing the 'white replacement theory' believed to be a motive for a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., as 'ugly and disgusting hate-mongering.'
Ontario driver who killed woman and three daughters sentenced to 17 years in prison
A driver who struck and killed a woman and her three young daughters nearly two years ago 'gambled with other people's lives' when he took the wheel, an Ontario judge said Monday in sentencing him to 17 years behind bars.
Half of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 still experiencing at least one symptom two years later: study
Half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic are still experiencing at least one symptom two years later, a new study suggests.
What we know so far about the victims of the Buffalo mass shooting
A former police officer, the 86-year-old mother of Buffalo's former fire commissioner, and a grandmother who fed the needy for decades were among those killed in a racist attack by a gunman on Saturday in a Buffalo grocery store. Three people were also wounded.
Ontario party leaders face off during 2022 election debate
The leaders of Ontario's four major political parties took the stage for a live televised debate in Toronto on Monday night.
Documents show a pattern of human rights abuses against gender diverse prisoners
Facing daily instances of violence and abuse, gender diverse people in the Canadian prison system say they are forced to take measures into their own hands to secure their safety.
White 'replacement theory' fuels racist attacks
A racist ideology seeping from the internet's fringes into the mainstream is being investigated as a motivating factor in the supermarket shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. Most of the victims were Black.
Amber Heard says she feared she would not survive Johnny Depp marriage
'Aquaman' actor Amber Heard told jurors in a defamation case on Monday that she filed for divorce from Johnny Depp in 2016 because she worried she would not survive physical abuse by him.