Murray Mandryk: A poor time to ease up in COVID-19 fight

By Murray Mandryk

If Premier Scott Moe is right that we are in the home stretch of our COVID-19 fight, we should all be reminded that this is not the time to ease up.

As one of my colleagues aptly put it, you don’t want to make the highlight reel because you dropped the ball celebrating before you got into the endzone.

In fairness, we shouldn’t accuse Moe of celebrating prematurely.

At his press conference last week, he actually suggested that now is the time to be both cautious and optimistic.

His optimism clearly stems from the notion that vaccines are being rolled out — notwithstanding his ongoing frustrations with the federal Liberal government and the vaccine manufacturers for not getting the vaccines out more quickly.

(Last week, Moe complained that the week’s shipment of Moderna vaccine would be delayed — something that company officials quickly denied.)

That said, vaccines don’t solve all our problems — even if we do meet the optimistic scenario of having most every Saskatchewan adult vaccine by June.

The better message for Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government should likely involve more than a stern warning. Moe can allow the province to ease up by easing up his own government restrictions.

It might not be about slowly loosening restrictions. Moe has to be ready to clamp down — especially in certain hotspots like Regina — if things get much worse than they already are.

Moe took the small, careful step of announcing on March 8th that “household bubbles” could be increased to 10 people from no more than three households from the current five-people, single household restrictions we have been under since before Christmas. He also announced that prior to Easter, restrictions on church services would be lifted to accommodate 150 people or 30 per cent of capacity (whichever one is fewer).

A cautious approach? Well, it might have seemed that way, but that would really depend on where you lived.

Cases of the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7 that was first detected in Britain were already circulating in Regina by the time of Moe’s restriction lift. In fact, of the 136 confirmed cases of the variant, 122 were found in Regina. Another186 of the 210 suspected new variant cases were also in Regina.

Also last week, cases in Yorkton and Melville had public schools moving back to online learning.

The notion that the new variants will remain in Regina and not spread all over — especially give that we really can’t impose travel restrictions within the province — doesn’t make much sense.

Now, this does not automatically mean every place in the province is about to experience an outbreak like the one we’re seeing in Regina that accounted for 101 of the 156 the daily cases on the day of Moe’s last press conference.

But given on that day there were 535 active cases in Regina out of 1,292 active cases, it in the entire province is not exactly a solid foundation for optimism right now.

With Regina as ground zero to 90 per cent of the new variants of COVID-19, Moe is deadly accurate that this is no time to let one’s guard down.

However, it may be a situation where we the Premier needs to do something more than offer polite suggestions.

So serious are the Regina numbers that Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab recommended at Moe’s press conference that Reginans seriously consider not dining in or going grocery shopping if it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Many people are taking COVID-19 seriously, as evident by the long lineups in Regina of 60+ years who were eligible to get their shots.

But vaccines shouldn’t be providing a false security — especially given how much more quickly new variants are spreading.

Let’s get the ball into the end zone. This is no time to fumble.