Saskatoon City Council has voted to suspend the COVID-19 risk mitigation framework. The framework recommends that the council impose or remove precautions as the number of active cases in the city increases and decreases.
The city’s director of emergency planning told the council the city administration is preparing for less provincial prescriptions.
“We are planning for a period when there are no public health orders, and we plan that it will probably be at the end of February,” Pamela Goulden-McLeod told the council.
The council meeting took place at the same time, Prime Minister Scott Moe announced that the province would remove the requirement for people to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test by the end of February.
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The Council adopted the framework in August 2021, when provincial health guidelines ordered organizations to manage the transmission of the virus with their own measures.
Since then, according to a city report, the province has passed legislation requiring most facilities to check evidence of vaccination or for a recent negative test and mandatory isolation and masking.
But since the provincial government no longer requires people who test positive for a rapid antigen test to get a PCR test, there is no official record of the diagnosis, and it’s hard to know how COVID-19 in the city spreads.
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The city report says medical health officials are now looking more at hospitalizations, which do not follow the framework.
Goulden-McLeod said she would brief the council on the latest advice from the city’s medical officer when the province announced it was removing health guidelines.
If the medical health officer has different recommendations, Goulden-McLeod said, the city administration could ask the mayor or a majority of councilors to convene a special session of the city council to present the findings and discuss alternative measures.
“If we see public health orders lifted within the next few weeks, there’s going to be a lot of uncertainty about what this means for our customers, whether it’s in leisure facilities or on transportation and other civilian activities we provide,” Mayor Charlie Clark said.
“I think we should anticipate that it will require some discussion and I think it may not be possible to conduct that discussion before the order is lifted, depending on when it happens.”
Reference-globalnews.ca