Saskatchewan not asking for COVID-19 help, yet

Saskatchewan hospitals are full of COVID patients and on Thursday there were 78 people reported in ICU, which is one off the number of ICU beds the province has on a normal day.

But at a news conference on Thursday morning, Premier Scott Moe seemed reluctant to ask for help.

He did say it’s a daily conversation and that a formal request could be made within the next number of days, but Moe was also quick to say provincial officials need to be realistic about how much help the federal government would be able to provide.

He said Alberta’s help from the federal government has amounted to another eight ICU beds there.

“If you take that on a per capita, in Saskatchewan, that would be two — the addition of two ICU beds into about 130 that we’re expanded to here today,” said Moe.

But Moe said before the province asks for external help, it should be looking deeper within itself for every opportunity to support itself.

“Are there ways to support our frontline staff, in particular those that are working in our ICU departments?” asked Moe.

The premier said this is one of the things the new provincial command, announced Thursday, will look at.

Even so, Moe said he’d had high-level conversations with other provinces about their ability to possibly take Saskatchewan ICU patients and that he’d had conversations with the federal government about health-care human resources.

But now that the provincial command is in place, decisions about making those requests would be in its hands.

No new Thanksgiving restrictions

Though some in the medical community and Saskatoon’s city council were asking for new measures like gathering limits to control COVID-19 numbers, none were announced on Thursday.

When asked why, Moe simply said it’s because the majority of people in the province are vaccinated.

“And we’re not going to be implementing broad-based restrictions on 80 some per cent of the population that has gone out and gotten their first shot and over 70 per cent that are considered fully vaccinated,” said Moe, noting he’s very aware those people don’t want broad restrictions.

The premier said the measures in place in Saskatchewan are already significant, referring to the mask mandate in public places and the vaccine policy that came into effect Oct. 1.

“What we continue to do is ask and make life increasingly uncomfortable for those that have not yet been vaccinated, as they are ultimately the people that are predominantly ending up in our hospitals,” said Moe.

However, Moe did say that nothing is ever off the table.

Conspiracy theories

Moe took the opportunity Thursday, as he does every time it comes up, to tout vaccines as the way out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He encouraged people to get vaccinated if they haven’t already, and said the new vaccine policy is managing to raise rates.

However, this time Moe also directly addressed some of the conspiracy theories that may have stopped some people from getting their shots.

The premier said he’d been hearing from people recently who believed that he’s being paid off by vaccine companies, and that the emergency orders are a plot for him and Health Minister Paul Merriman to steal people’s cattle.

Both, Moe said, are wrong.

“They’re absolutely ridiculous and it would be funny if the consequences weren’t so serious today. Believing in and spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories is actually contributing to people dying from COVID by keeping them from getting vaccinated,” said Moe.

Those two are among the theories that Moe felt comfortable addressing, but he said there are others that should be addressed by doctors – specifically pointing to the debunked idea that Ivermectin be used to successfully treat COVID-19.

Moe said that the pandemic is being prolonged by people who won’t get vaccinated.

“We look at the evidence, we listen to the doctors, we listen to the experts,” Moe said. “Stop listening to all of the nonsense that is out there on social media, is what I would ask Saskatchewan people to do.”