Beaufort Delta politicians are questioning why its taking so long for the Covid Secretariat of the GNWT to inform people of the Beaufort Delta when there is a positive case after significant delays marred two announcements of confirmed diagnoses in Inuvik.
Inuvik-Twin Lakes MLA Lesa Semmler says she’s still trying to get answers to very basic questions.
“My one question is, and I can’t get an answer, is when was this first case at the homeless shelter diagnosed?” she said. “Just tell me what day it was.”
Semmler said she’s frustrated, noting the nurses, medical and administrative officials charged with monitoring and containing Covid-19 in the Beaufort Delta are working extremely hard, but all information has to pass through the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer (OCPHO) in Yellowknife through encrypted emails. Then, they simply have to wait until the OCPHO writes up an announcement, which in the case of a Covid-19 diagnosis at Aurora College that was announced at the campus on Saturday took until the Tuesday of the next week.
In an Oct. 6 press conference, Dr. Kami Kandola said the delay was because the OCPHO’s notifications only publish the numbers available before 9 a.m. of the day and the office only found out about the case later in the day.
Noting she received a similar explanation, Semmler said it the OCPHO’s excuse doesn’t cut it.
“Why aren’t they opening their emails on the weekend? It’s Covid,” she said. “They said ‘We don’t report probable cases anymore, because it gets everybody up in storm’ — I would rather you report a probable case in a community that hasn’t had many cases than wait until you get confirmation a week later.
“Everybody’s shutting down. Is it necessary? We don’t know, but it could be. There shouldn’t be a reason why it’s being delayed to the public.”
Most offices and non-essential businesses in Inuvik closed Oct. 13 in the wake of the announcement of an outbreak declared at both the Inuvik Warming Shelter and the Inuvik Homeless Shelter.
Semmler added publishing probable cases in communities where Covid-19 is not widespread would give residents the maximum time to contain the virus, noting if people were aware of the probable cases during the last two weekends, which have seen a rally for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that attracted about 200 people and Thanksgiving weekend, they may have made different choices. Semmler added a lot of people work to provide hot dinners for the homeless during the Thanksgiving weekend who could have been potentially exposed.
Meanwhile, outgoing assistant deputy mayor and councillor Steve Baryluk has asked town council to explore what options it has to put pressure on the GNWT for faster communication.
“I don’t know if it’s worthwhile at all to make any effort to find out why the communication seems to have some sort of delay here compared to information that’s coming out say in Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ where things notices are coming out sort of the same day, whereas here our notices are for exposures that happened up to a week ago without people being aware that those exposures have happened,” he said during his last council meeting Oct. 13. “It significantly increases the risk of transmission.
“I think there’s a lot of concern in the community about why we haven’t been hearing things in a more timely manner.”
Outgoing Mayor Natasha Kulikowski said she’s been in constant contact with local MLAs over the issue and has also raised the issue with the Northwest Territories Association of Communities.