Sask. vaccination rates ‘skewed’ by former residents inoculated elsewhere, Merriman says

Health Minister Paul Merriman believes the province’s vaccination rates are being underestimated because of Saskatchewan expatriates who have been inoculated against COVID-19 elsewhere.

“We have a whole bunch of health cards of people that have moved out of the province … that have been vaccinated in other provinces but aren’t being counted here in Saskatchewan,” Merriman told reporters after a media availability Thursday when he received his flu shot at a north Regina pharmacy.

The minister did not have a number of how many former residents have been vaccinated elsewhere but he said their health records do not reflect their vaccination statuses.

“So I think the number is a little skewed,” he said.

Merriman said the province’s emergency operations centre will work with the Saskatchewan Health Authority to get an exact number “and if we can take them off our health card list and clean out that data.”

“We’ve done it once and we need to do it again just because we want to make sure that the actual hard numbers out there are the real numbers reflective of the people in Saskatchewan,” he continued, adding every province has the challenge of ensuring its data is accurate.

The percentage of those vaccine-eligible who’ve received a first dose is 84 per cent, Merriman said. For second doses, that number is 74 per cent, he continued.

Once Health Canada approves vaccines for children aged five and older, Merriman said he hopes those numbers will spike.

As it stands, Saskatchewan continues to have the lowest vaccination rates among Canadian provinces, both in first doses and full vaccination. However, the minister looks elsewhere when making comparisons across jurisdictions.

“Our vaccination rate is lower than other provinces but it is higher when you look at across North America. And (if) you look at some of those other places in North America that have no restrictions whatsoever, our vaccination rate is way higher than them,” Merriman said.

Modelling data ‘probably within the week’

Merriman was asked if the province will make public its COVID-19 modelling. He replied by saying modelling is only a forecast of various scenarios rather than a concrete prediction of what will happen.

“We’ve seen in the past that the modelling hasn’t been extremely accurate in everything that we’re doing. They were projecting at the end of August that there was going to be six (hundred), seven hundred cases a day. That didn’t happen,” he said.

However, Merriman added he has “no issue with the modelling coming out and we’ll work to be able to make sure that we get that out to the media.”

Public health orders a ‘base layer’ of restrictions

Prior to the Thanksgiving long weekend, groups representing doctors and nurses had called for additional public health measures like gathering limits to curb the spike in COVID cases and hospitalizations.

Merriman defended the government’s approach, which did not include capping gatherings, saying the province has enacted restrictions, redeployed health-care workers and introduced proof of vaccination for various establishments.

He called those measures “huge leaps and bounds” for people. He also said public health orders are a “stopgap” and the best way to handle the pandemic is through vaccination.

Municipalities that want further action are free to enact their own measures, Merriman continued.

“We have a base layer of restrictions and recommendations on that. If the municipalities want to be able to add on top of that, they have that ability to do that,” he said, using the City of Saskatoon as an example of a municipality that has introduced restrictions for its facilities.

“If a municipality wants to add on top of that, that’s absolutely their prerogative.”