Sask. fall sitting focused on vaccinations and government's 4th wave response

The Saskatchewan government started the legislative sitting rejecting criticism of its handling of the fourth wave by saying it was unvaccinated people spurring the rise in hospitalizations, but in the siting's final week Premier Scott Moe warned the public against stigmatizing those who remain unvaccinated.

During the five-week sitting, Saskatchewan sent more than two dozen of its COVID-19 patients for care in intensive care units in Ontario. Canadian Forces health-care staff members were at Regina's General Hospital relieving workers there. For long stretches of the fall, Saskatchewan led the country in per capita cases and death rates.

October was the province's deadliest month of the pandemic, with 156 people losing their lives.

The Opposition spent the entire sitting dissecting the government's COVID-19 response and its knock-on impacts.

This culminated on the final day of the sitting with Opposition caucus members sharing stories of people who had come forward to share their hardship.

On numerous occasions, both Premier Scott Moe and Health Minister Paul Merriman said the government was forced to shift health-care workers to pandemic response because of the high number of unvaccinated people filling hospitals and ICU wards.

This week, Moe repeated his message that the most effective tool in fighting the pandemic is through vaccination and preventing hospitalizations.

Vaccinations were the overarching theme of the fall sitting. 

From the opening week of the sitting, Opposition Leader Ryan Meili pointed to an August letter from Saskatchewan medical health officers that called for the implementation of indoor masking and proof of vaccination policies, among other things. 

Those policies were implemented in mid-September, and led to an increase in vaccination uptake and the eventual reduction of COVID-19 cases.

A week before the sitting, Moe told CBC's Morning Edition host Stefani Langenegger that his government could have acted sooner in announcing measures. One month later he said he "regrets" not implementing those measures sooner.  

Day after day in question period, Meili and his caucus accused Moe and Merriman of failing to take ownership of the decision not to implement measures. Both said the eventual implementation led to a near 250,000 increase in total doses from mid-September to the final day of the sitting, and subsequently fewer and fewer new cases.

For the first time in more than a year, guests were allowed inside the chamber, which led to the opposition inviting a stream of people unable to get the medical procedures they needed because of the pandemic.

In most cases, Merriman and even Moe took time to chat with them.