Dr. Jeff Betcher – Saskatchewan Health Authority’s (SHA) Critical Care lead for Regina and Leah Sawatsky, emergency room nurse in Regina, met virtually with members of the media on Wednesday to answer questions. Joining them was Dr. Tania Diener, Medical Health Officer and SHA Immunization lead.
Dr. Betcher began by saying the last large scale immunization was polio, adding how important immunization is in the fight of COVID, “we have some good examples with polio and influenza, and we have eliminated smallpox entirely from the population. It’s been almost 40 years since our last reported case, so this is a monumental time for us.”
Dr. Diener – “I must admit that last night was a pretty emotional moment, you build up to it and then at last when you see the vaccine, and you realize it’s going into people’s arms. It’s the start of a long road, it’s going to take us quite a while to get through our population, but it made its start, and it was just this wonderful warm feeling that there can be an end to this. We’ve got a long and hard road, but we are starting it. Yeah it was a good moment.”
Leah Sawatsky said she is not feeling any side effects. She responded to a question from The Last Mountain Times that it was important to her “because I see COVID patients in our department every day. Like I said last night, it’s not discriminating against age. We are seeing some sick kids now as well. There was a newborn in Calgary this week who was quite sick with COVID. It’s very important to me to protect myself to protect my patients, my coworkers and my family, and hopefully, we can get together in the new year and celebrate then.”
Dr. Betcher – “while we haven’t seen the numbers that have been seen in Ontario and Québec….the three prairie provinces have the highest per hundred thousand cases currently, which is rather sobering. We now have our one ICU in Regina is completely full of Covid patients, we have another ICU that is starting to fill up… .we’ve spent a long time preparing for this.” “I’ve seen the devastating effects on the families. Some people have died that haven’t been able to see their families… It’s tragic. I’m optimistic that this is the beginning of the end. It’s certainly not over yet. We have a long ways to go, but this is just another thing that we have that can help us overcome this, and I’m excited about it.”
Dr. Betcher said the ICU capacity is very tight in the province with ICU’s approaching capacity. He added that Saskatoon is on bypass, which means that patient referrals from outlying areas such as North Battleford or Prince Albert that would typically go to Saskatoon are being sent to Regina.
Sawatsky said that “it’s heartbreaking when your patient looks at you and asks you if they are going to die and you have to give them an answer and they have to go through it alone. I’m super glad that the vaccine came earlier than we all expected, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for sure, and I’m excited to see the case numbers start to go down in the near future.”
Dr. Diener said it would take a long time to immunize the population. Adding, the logistical and distribution information learned from the initial vaccination of 1,950 health care providers in Regina has already begun to be shared with other areas in the SHA, so when they receive the vaccine, they will be ready to start implementing it.
She feels that it will be a few months for the vaccinations to get to the general population. She was hopeful the vaccination of priority groups completed by April.
She cautioned that “we need to remember where we are in this pandemic. Our numbers do not look good at this point in time. We have just heard of public health orders that have been increased from midnight tonight. We are going into a festive season where we are used to having family together. We are asking the public to adhere to public health orders because this is the time for all of us to come together and fight this virus with the other tools that we have at the moment because all of us don’t have the vaccine at the moment, the masking the social distancing, keeping your bubble small, staying within your household, all of that is so important, we really need to stay vigilant on that.”
Jennifer Argue, LMT - Local Journalism Initiative Reporter