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A growing COVID-19 outbreak in Lloydminster has plenty of extra attention on the usually quiet city.
On Wednesday, the Saskatchewan Health Authority announced an outbreak of 13 positive cases linked to the Lloydminster Hospital, including five health-care workers and eight patients.
With updates on Thursday and Friday, the number of active cases increased to 21.
Lloydminster mayor Gerald Aalbers was quickly thrust into the unique position of being a leader of a city that’s in the middle of a COVID-19 outbreak while being in the middle of two provinces.
“What’s happened here can happen anywhere,” he said.
The fact that it happened in Lloydminster creates a peculiar case, even for a historic pandemic.
The city is governed by a Lloydminster Charter, which determines whether it follows Alberta or Saskatchewan legislation since Lloydminster doesn’t abide by the Cities Act in Saskatchewan or the Municipalities Act in Alberta.
However, for healthcare purposes, the border city is following the Saskatchewan Public Health Act since the Saskatchewan Health Authority does the brunt of the work in the city with the regional hospital being on the Saskatchewan side of the city.
Saskatchewan announcing its reopening plan, then excluding Lloydminster from it after the outbreak was realized created more uncertainty in the city with a population of 31,000, because Alberta announced it’s reopening plan on Thursday without excluding Lloydminster.
So which province does the city follow?
“In this case, it is a little bit challenging,” Aalbers said of deciding where Lloydminster fits as both provinces look to engage parts of the economy again.
“We’re trying to navigate through that and ensure that the safety of the citizens is foremost and ensuring we operate as one city across the boundary.”
Being excluded from Saskatchewan’s plan has left Aalbers torn.
“I have mixed emotions,” he said. “No one wants to be responsible for infecting someone. We’ve seen a broad perspective (of opinions), so I’m trying to use the best judgement with consultation with city council and administration to set some direction here – and it’s been a little tough.”
Aalbers and the rest of city administration isn’t sure quite yet what the border city will do. He knows that further guidelines or restrictions like the travel bans in place in Saskatchewan’s far north won’t work in Lloydminster.
“I think it would be extremely difficult,” Aalbers said, pointing to infrastructure in the city on both sides of the border and people shopping for essential supplies in the same manner.
“We can’t simply stop travel from Alberta to Saskatchewan because the infrastructure is on both sides of the city that supports the entire city. It is challenging and I believe we wouldn’t be the place that you’d want to set up a checkstop.”
Of all the issues Aalbers is facing, he sees communication between the SHA, the province and his officials as an easy one to clear up after he was blindsided like the rest of the province with an announcement of 34 diagnosed cases on Wednesday.
It was later revealed that Dr. Mandiangu Nsungu, the medical health officer for the northern region, reported the outbreak to the Ministry of Health on Sunday.
“We need to ask some questions and hopefully see some improvements in the communication stream. I’m sure the government of Saskatchewan and the SHA will be considering those same ideas, I hope,” Aalbers said.
Scott Livingstone, the SHA CEO, responded to criticism on Friday that notification of the outbreak should have been publicly announced sooner.
“While we don’t believe there was any additional risk created to staff or public because of this delay in the public notification, we do recognize that it should have occurred sooner,” Livingstone said.
“It is certainly not the way in which SHA wants to be known as a good communicator between our partners and the public. We are working with the Ministry of Health to correct that situation so it doesn’t happen again.”
The SHA has since said the Ministry of Health was notified of the Lloydminster outbreak on Monday.
Lloydminster is included as part of the SHA’s north region, which includes Prince Albert, North Battleford and Melfort. The health authority is not listing specific communities in its COVID-19 announcements outside of clusters or outbreak declarations.