The opposition NDP says the provincial government isn’t doing enough with their latest extension of the public health measures until February 19th.
NDP leader Ryan Meili says 46 people have lost their lives in the last week, which is a lot of families and friends mourning loved ones.
“It’s really frustrating to know that this was avoidable,” Meili said. “If we had gone through a circuit breaker back in the fall and taken action early, we could have avoided these deaths and yet here we are (Tuesday), still leading the country in the rate of active cases, over 10 percent positivity test rate, low testing compared to what we should be doing, and outbreaks in long-term care.”
Meili says the province needs to ensure these are the right measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.
“We’ve seen no action to protect against long term care outbreaks, to reduce the density of residents in four-bed rooms in long term care, and we’ve still got people going to bars,” Meili said. “That’s not the case anywhere else in western Canada.”
Meili says increased measures such as closing off the provincial borders are things the province needs to consider.
“The public health measures often described the swiss cheese measure, and the number one is keeping out new cases, and especially as we’re thinking about a new, deadlier, more contagious variant, we have to think about what’s happening at our borders.”
Meili also denounced the small protest that took place at the private home of Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab over the weekend, saying the protest is ‘completely unacceptable,’ adding he hopes people learn that is the exact wrong thing to do.
