Nickel Belt News Volume 61 • Issue 4
Friday, January 29, 2021
Thompson, Manitoba
Serving the Norman Region since 1961
Northern Manitoba continues to see multiple COVID-19 outbreaks and high test positivity
BY IAN GRAHAM
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
The recent trend of Northern Manitoba accounting for the majority of new COVID-19 cases in the province continued Jan. 25, with 58 new northern cases of the virus among 113 new cases overall. Most of the new northern cases – 33 – were in the Island Lake health district, which now has nearly 700 active cases of the virus. “That is an area where we’re seeing a lot of transmission,” said chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin at a press conference on Monday. “There’s a lot of work from all levels to address that through
that public health approach. We’re really concerned with the level of transmission that’s happening right now." Northern health districts with single-digit increases since Sunday included Cross Lake/Pimicikamak, Gillam/ Fox Lake, The Pas/Opaskwyak Cree Nation/Kelsey, Bunibonibee/Oxford House/ Manto Sipi/God’s River/ God’s Lake, Grand Rapids/ Misipawistik/Easterville/ Chemawawin/Moose Lake, Shamattawa/York Factory/ Tataskewyak/Split Lake and Thompson/Mystery Lake. With 98 active cases and 474 since the pandemic began, the Thompson/Mystery Lake health district has now had the second-most total cases
of any health district in the north. “Right now the test positivity is quite high in the north,” said Roussin. “We see outbreaks in many areas throughout the north. It may certainly be from some sort of travel and back into the community and then, just like anywhere else, when we see outbreaks it’s caused by gatherings, larger gatherings and then we see a large amount of contacts. A certain amount of those contacts become cases. It’s the nature of this virus. The more we gather the more spread we’re going to have.” The north passed 3,500 total cases of the virus since the pandemic began with the
new cases announced Monday, and about half of them are officially considered active, though the actual number of active cases both in the region and throughout the province is likely lower. “The active case count is a surveillance tool," Roussin said. “There can be a discrepancy between the actual active cases and the reported ones. Most people are focused now on contact tracing and finding cases rather than removing people off of our surveillance list.” Roussin also addressed the fact that some northern communities are lobbying for restrictions to be lifted on a community-by-community basis rather than having
a blanket approach for the whole north. “In the region in the north where we see the most test positivity we had to keep those restrictions in place and of course there’s going to be sectors, there’s going to be individuals, there’s going to be communities within there that feel that they should open but it’s very challenging to write these orders at a much more targeted approach than at the regional level. We’ll continue to review it and we’ll continue our public health approach to try to bring down those numbers in the northern region so that we can all loosen some of these restrictions.” Across Manitoba, there
are 145 people in hospital with active COVID-19 infections and 127 whose infections are no longer considered active. Of those, 23 with active infections and 13 who are no longer infectious are receiving intensive care. Forty-four northerners are in hospital due to the virus, all but three of them with active infections. Five of those northern patients are in intensive care. Five deaths due to COVID-19 were announced Jan. 25, bringing the total number who have died from the virus in Manitoba to 804. The provincial five-day test positivity rate was 10.8 per cent on Monday.
Canadian Armed Forces personnel deploy to Garden Hill First Nation to tackle COVID BY NICOLE WONG
LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER, WINNIPEG SUN
Approximately 30 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel have been deployed to Garden Hill First Nation to provide humanitarian assistance and address the emergent needs of the community. Between Jan. 17 and 18, members of the CAF were sent to support an Indigenous Service Canada-led liaison and reconnaissance team to rapidly assess the situation in the Northern Manitoba community. Following a formal request for assistance, the CAF arrived at the First Nation on Wednesday to work alongside other community members and other government departments and agencies.
“In Island Lake, we have been working hard to try to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus,” Alex McDougall, executive director of Four Arrows Regional Health Authority (FARHA) told the Winnipeg Sun Jan. 22 “Bringing down the number of cases in the region is something we want to see very quickly, and having the military personnel in the community to assist with the immunization plan is something that needs to continue.” FARHA oversees health services for all Island Lake Anishininew Nation communities, including Garden Hill First Nation, Wasagamack First Nation, St. Theresa Point First Nation and Red Sucker Lake First Nation. Garden Hill First Nation
is located 610 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg and 350 air kilometres southeast of Thompson. Manitoba’s Island Lake health district saw a total of 300 active cases as of Jan. 21 with 266 of those cases from Garden Hill First Nation. According to CAF spokesperson Jessica Lamirande, tasks which the CAF has been called to do are: · Provide general duty support to the community and nursing station for clerical, maintenance, cleaning duties of isolating personnel where required; · Integrate into the local Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) command post in the community to coordinate activities with the chief and his council and other government
partners; · Assist in the establishment and operating of a local Alternative Isolation Area (AIA), · Arrange for training and support to incoming staff in the operation of the AIA; · Provide limited assistance with patient management tasks, including triage, secondary assessment, monitoring of patients, testing and treatment of COVID-19 patients; · Where necessary assist with home wellness checks; and · Offer transportation assistance to other responding government departments in and out of the affected area for cargo and personnel, if required. On Jan. 15, approximately
one-third of the 5,300 Moderna vaccines allocated to Manitoba First Nations arrived at Island Lake. Garden Hill First Nation received 320 doses of the vaccine during the weekend. Despite many COVID-19 cases in the region, there are still some who refuse to receive immunity against the virus. “We are seeing apprehension within the community members in Garden Hill. The situation there is bad as well as overall in Island Lake. Community members are frustrated and scared at the same time,” said McDougall. “This is a strong indicator that we need to continue with our education and awareness piece, and share with our members the importance of
participating in the immunization plan,” he added. FARHA has been working with the provincial and federal government for two decades to bring in critical infrastructure in the area such as a hospital that can provide services to the residents of Island Lake. McDougall said that patients suffering from COVID-19 in Island Lake need to be flown out to Winnipeg to receive treatment. Currently, the Garden Hill community is under lockdown, with non-essential travel prohibited. Nicole Wong is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
2020 was busiest year ever for paramedic calls in Thompson BY IAN GRAHAM
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
The overall number of calls that Thompson Fire & Emergency Services (TFES) responded to in 2020 was up marginally from the previous year, thanks mainly to a four per cent increase in emergency medical services (EMS) calls. "We had 6,881 EMS calls last year compared to 6,616 in 2019,” TFES Chief Selby Brown told Thompson’s recreation and community services committee at their Jan. 19 meeting. That is the highest number of EMS calls the department has ever had and it was the fifth straight year that there were more than 6,000 EMS calls. Fire calls, on the other hand, numbered 473 last year, down 264 from the highest ever total of 727 in 2019. With the exception
Thompson Citizen photo by Ian Graham An ambulance at the scene of a December traffic accident in Thompson. of 2018 and 2019, fire calls have generally hovered from the mid-400s to mid-500s over the past 10 years. Calls requiring response from multiple
units have increased greatly over the past decade, reaching nearly 3,300 in 2020, the highest number ever. 2019 was the first year that the department had more than 3,000 multiple unit calls and there have only been over 2,000 twice before that, in 2016 and 2018. “It goes up exponentially every year,” Brown told committee chair Coun. Braden McMurdo when asked if the increases were due to reclassification of incidents or just raw numbers. “That’s a trajectory that we certainly need to jeep our eye on,” McMurdo said. “It’s hard to believe it’d be sustainable going in that direction.” Coun. Kathy Valentino said the city should use the numbers to its advantage when trying to convince the province of the need for more health care services in Thompson and for funding for a new fire hall.
“As always they are rising so we need to use this document for the province,” she said. “We’re basically using the same fire hall as in 1997 for triple the fire calls,” said Mayor Colleen Smook. McMurdo said that the province doesn’t always agree with Thompson’s position as a regional hub but that it recognizes it as such when it has to, which led to the decision to establish a COVID-19 vaccination site here. “Maybe now we can even leverage the fact that the Thompson Airport and the TRCC are being used as the Vaxport with the pandemic,” said McMurdo. City manager Anthony McInnis said the city would contact provincial ministers with data about EMS call volumes. “The mayor and I actually discussed that yesterday,” he said. “Let’s get Vaxport up and running and then send those letters off.”