Health Minister Paul Merriman commented Friday on Mayor Charlie Clark’s request for stricter COVID-19 restrictions in Saskatoon, due to variants of concern. Mayor Clark made the request for tougher restrictions to the provincial government, due to a rise in COVID-19 cases and a new variant of concern identified in the city this week.

Merriman suggests numbers across the province are stabilizing and Saskatoon still has ICU capacity. He says the risk of what happened in Regina has led the province to introduce more drive-thru clinics and vaccines for Saskatoon. “More measures aren’t necessarily going to fix the problem it’s going be adhering to the public health measures that are in place, as we’ve seen there’s been some incidents of people not adhering to that. And get your vaccine as fast as you can, that’s what’s going to help Saskatoon and the rest of the province.” In order for the province to consider tougher restrictions, Merriman says that would come from conversations with Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab, but he believes Saskatoon and Regina are holding the line on the faster moving variants.

Provincial NDP Leader Ryan Meili is criticizing the Health Minister and Premier Scott Moe for not introducing stricter COVID-19 restrictions in Saskatoon. “This Minister, this Premier they are not being smart when it comes to preventing things getting worse, they’re waiting until it’s too late and as a result people will die. You hear that once, it’s bad, but it’s not once, it’s over and over and over again, it’s a pattern of incredible short-shortsightedness that is fatal.” Meili says Merriman is committed to waiting until it’s too late, even with recent modeling showing it looks like things will get much worse.