(Lara Fominoff/650 CKOM file photo)

By Lisa Schick/CJME News

Merriman unworried about slow vaccination rates

Aug 10, 2021 | 3:26 PM

From the peak of 22,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered in one day in June to just over 850 doses reported Tuesday, the pace of vaccinations has been going down in Saskatchewan.

That isn’t a worry for Health Minister Paul Merriman, though. He shrugged it off, saying people are busy in the summer and there has been slower uptake for people under 40 years old because the impacts from the virus aren’t as severe.

Merriman believes vaccinations will be steady throughout the summer.

“The encouraging part to me is if we’re still hovering in and around that 15 per cent of people getting new doses,” Merriman said. “So anytime we report out, we’re getting (first doses) all the time — which is phenomenal that people are still coming out …

“They’re still coming out and having that second thought of, ‘Yeah, maybe I should get this if I want to travel or if I want to be going to events outside the province and they require me to get a dose.’ ”

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On Sunday, the province shut down its mass clinics and drive-thru clinics, and will now be relying on outreach with things like pop-up clinics.

“Now we’re going out and targeting them specifically to find out why they’re not getting this vaccine and how we can come to them,” explained Merriman.

In northern Saskatchewan, where COVID-19 vaccination rates are generally lower, Merriman said officials have health workers going door to door to offer shots.

Pop-up vaccine clinics are being set up all over the province. Merriman said he’d recently been at a provincial park where a clinic was running.

But there often aren’t big lineups at these clinics. An opportunity for COVID-19 vaccinations at the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ CFL game on Friday had only nine people sit down for a jab, according to the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

Merriman said there’s a smaller percentage of the population who still needs shots, so you won’t get thousands of people in a lineup anymore.

“The little ones add up — 10 here, 12 there. You do that across the province (and) all of a sudden we’ve got a few hundred people more vaccinated with their first dose and queuing them up for their second dose,” said Merriman.

Merriman admitted there will be a pocket of people anywhere who aren’t going to get the vaccine because they don’t believe in it. He called that unfortunate.

Vaccination update

There were 853 vaccinations done in the province in the latest reporting period, increasing Saskatchewan’s total to date to 1,434,610 doses.

Of the latest shots, 625 were second doses. So far, 667,556 people have received both shots.

Over the past week, 16,708 doses were administered in Saskatchewan. As of Tuesday, 75 per cent of the province’s residents aged 12 and over have received their first dose and 66 per cent of those 12 and up are fully vaccinated.

A look at the numbers

The province reported two deaths in the 80-and-over age group on Tuesday. To date, 584 Saskatchewan residents have died due to COVID — including six in the past week.

There also were 65 new cases of COVID reported Tuesday, for a weekly total of 536.

The new cases were in the Saskatoon (18), far northwest (12), far northeast (11), north-central (six), Regina (five), far north-central (four), southeast (three), northwest (two), central-west (one), central-east (one), southwest (one) and south-central (one) zones.

Since March of 2020, 50,679 COVID cases have been confirmed in the province.

There were 79 recoveries announced Tuesday, hiking the week’s total to 368.

The active caseload in the province stands at 634. The seven-day average of new cases is 77, or 6.4 per 100,000 population.

There were 62 COVID patients in Saskatchewan hospitals, including 13 in intensive care. Seven of the ICU cases are in Saskatoon, with three in Regina.