Sask.'s political leaders are responsible for unnecessary suffering and death
CBC
This Opinion piece was written by Nazeem Muhajarine, a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan's college of medicine, and Kathryn Green, a former associate professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan.
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After 19 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned much about how to control the spread of the virus to minimize suffering and death. Sadly for the people of Saskatchewan, our government is ignoring these important lessons and we are experiencing the tragic consequences of our leaders' inaction.
September was a record-setting month for Saskatchewan. These aren't the kinds of records you want to break.
The number of active COVID cases, new daily cases, COVID patients in hospital and ICU patients all reached new highs. Almost one-fifth of all the cases recorded since the pandemic began came in the past month. Low testing rates mean this is surely an underestimate.
While vaccinations have kept the death rate lower than last winter, Saskatchewan lost 88 of its residents to COVID in September. The health-care system is strained to the point where surgeries for anything not immediately life-threatening have been cancelled, organ transplants are on hold and adults are being treated in the province's only pediatric ICU.
We need to be clear that this suffering, loss of life, stress on health-care workers and disruption of health services could have been prevented.
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