Premier asks for patience during vaccine rollout

Premier Scott Moe urged patience Wednesday for Saskatchewan residents categorized as Phase 1 recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine who have yet to hear when they will receive their shots.

Moe said the silence is the result of not having enough vaccines to inoculate everyone in a given community categorized under Phase 1, which includes high-risk populations.

He said the Saskatchewan Health Authority will administer vaccines for long-term care residents and health-care workers and then proceed to its age-based criteria.

“This does mean that not everybody in Phase 1 is going to be contacted when the first influx or even the second influx of vaccines come into their community,” Moe told Gormley.

Moe expects the province to be done Phase 1 by early April.

“I’m asking people in the province just to be a little bit patient. You will be contacted when we get to the end of March (or) early April if you haven’t been,” he said.

By mid-March, Moe said anybody who has gone without notification can dial a phone number to book an appointment.

The creation of the hotline notwithstanding, Moe said the “big shift” between the two stages is that residents will be contacted during the first phase and in Phase 2, people will be reaching out to schedule their appointments.

Some overlap is expected between Phase 1 and Phase 2, which will be the widespread offering of the vaccine starting with the oldest and moving to the youngest.

Once the vaccination rate for Phase 1 slows down, Moe said the chief medical health officer will be “looking very quickly” to start the next stage.

“When we have vaccines that are sitting on the shelf for one or two days, that we don’t have someone in Phase 1 available to come in and receive that vaccine, we’re going to shift and shift very quickly to Phase 2,” he said.