Moe confident in decision on tougher COVID measures in Regina

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe isn’t second-guessing his decision to bring in tougher public health measures in the Regina area.

During an appearance on Gormley on Wednesday, Moe said the decision was needed to get a handle on the city’s surging COVID-19 case numbers, including the contagious variants.

“This is exactly what I didn’t want to do. There are people that are going home (today) that won’t have a job come Monday for a short period of time and I am fully aware of that,” Moe said.

“Variants are present in other areas of the province as well, but not anywhere near the concentrations they are in Regina. It does require an added set of measures here in what I hope is the final number of weeks before we really have vaccines available to everyone in this province.”

The Regina area makes up over half of the active cases of COVID in the province and vast majority of the 891 confirmed variants.

Moe doesn’t have an answer as to why the Queen City has been harder hit than other communities.

“The No. 1 issue with the variant is it is more transmissible. More people have it (and) more younger people have this variant. In Regina, 80 per cent of our active cases are under the age of 50,” Moe said.

“That’s the reason for the measures we brought in. That’s the reason why we allocated the first batch of the AstraZeneca (vaccine) to the drive-through clinic in Regina is to get ahead of the variant in this community. That’s the reason we’re going to continue to allocate some AstraZeneca doses.”

The province is expecting another shipment of AstraZeneca doses to arrive before the end of the month.

Moe said the province will reopen the drive-through clinic in Regina once the doses arrive, as well as open new clinics in Saskatoon, Moose Jaw and Yorkton.