Sask. Health Authority in the midst of preparing for coronavirus

With cases being found in provinces across the country, it’s likely not a matter of if Saskatchewan will see its first coronavirus case, it’s when.

So the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) is in the midst of preparing.

“There’s existing pandemic plans and over the past number of weeks there was a transition to focusing specifically on COVID-19,” SHA executive director John Ash said during a media conference Wednesday.

Ash said the whole organization has been working on establishing operational plans down to a local and area level.

The authority has also established an emergency operations centre in Saskatchewan. Ash said it’s not so much about the resources the authority needs to fight the pandemic.

“It’s more about aligning staff and focusing them on the right work, so whether that’s aligning community testing or preparing our acute care facilities or working with our family practice physicians,” said Ash.

The authority is also working on its messaging around personal protective equipment like masks and gloves and getting the appropriate information to staff around screening.

Ash said the SHA has identified the impact of the virus, working with the Ministry of Health on modeling to figure out what it might do.

When it comes to the actual resources and supplies the authority needs, Ash said the SHA is focused on making sure it has the appropriate protective equipment like masks, gloves, and gowns. He explained the authority is actively going out and getting what it needs and securing its supply chains.

Ash said the supply and resource situation is one example of why it’s beneficial for the province is no longer a collection of individual health regions.

“Now that we’re a single health authority we can identify, as a collective, what are the resources that we have,” he said. “We can leverage bulk buying and working with the federal government to get the equipment and supplies that we need.”

And, Ash said, if there ends up being a greater need in a particular area of the province, the authority can shift resources to meet that need.

Even with health authority planning, the province’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab, said individuals’ precautions are still important.

“If it comes quickly and you don’t do anything to control it, it can put a lot of pressure on the health-care system,” Shahab said. “It doesn’t matter how much you plan, it’ll still strip your capacity.”

The media conference was ended before other questions around hospital beds and costs could be answered.

As of Wednesday afternoon, there still weren’t any positive tests for coronavirus — also known as COVID-19 — in Saskatchewan. There had been 202 negative tests and another two tests which were waiting for results.

RM of Auvergne concerned with pandemic status

The reeve representing the Rural Municipality of Auvergne, located about 100 kilometres south of Swift Current in the Aneroid and Ponteix area, said he is hearing concerns from his residents about the virus.

“If you do look at what’s happening at other parts of the world and how they have closed down the country in Italy and parts of China, that just doesn’t happen if it’s like the flu,” Richard Marleau said at the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities meeting Wednesday.

The RM has a population of about 400 to 500 people, he said.

Being remote and rural, and having the isolation that comes with that, isn’t necessarily an advantage to protect against being infected by the virus, he added.

That’s because of the amount of travel people do and the locations they travel to.

“You could be in an interaction, you could be at an event in Calgary and somebody from wherever was at Calgary and (then) it’s being spread,” he said.

Marleau said he and the RM’s councillor haven’t yet implemented policy changes; they’re waiting to hear specific directives from the provincial government.

“Individuals can kind of protect themselves, but until those larger measures are done and it’s a national effort or a provincial effort, you’re really not going to contain it,” he said.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Evan Radford