Sask. premier's messaging diverges from health-care officials amid refusal to adopt COVID-19 restrictions
CBC
Premier Scott Moe's message to Saskatchewan people ahead of the Thanksgiving long weekend was not to take extra precautions to bring down nation-leading COVID-19 cases and record hospitalizations — it was to explain a new structural response aimed at co-ordinating pandemic response.
In recent days, the provincial government's messaging on the fourth wave of the pandemic has diverged sharply from medical health officers in the Saskatchewan Health Authority, doctors and its own chief medical health officer.
Thursday's COVID-19 news conference, for the first time in recent memory, featured no appearance from Dr. Saqib Shahab or a representative from the health authority.
A week earlier, Shahab told the public the province was headed toward a "fall and winter of misery."
"We will not only not have Thanksgiving at this rate. We will likely not have Christmas and New Year's at this rate," Shahab said on Sept. 29.
With the province experiencing "a mass casualty event every day," Shahab said "maybe other public health orders will be required."
At a public board meeting last week, health authority CEO Scott Livingstone said the province was three weeks away from seeing doctors use medical triage procedures and may need help from outside the province to care for critically ill patients.
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