Merriman provides some clarity on vaccine passports

Saskatchewan health minister, Paul Merriman, is giving more insight on what immunization certificates – or as some people call them, vaccine passports – could look like.

“The government is working with all provinces to make sure that we have proper verification or identification that we have been vaccinated if another country asks to make sure that you’re fully vaccinated,” Merriman said. “It will be part of a federal initiative for international travel. We’re going to be able to upload the information to the federal government that they will know who has been fully vaccinated and who hasn’t, or will be able to give the federal government access to a specific portal that will be able to allow them to find out if that person is vaccinated or if they are not vaccinated.

“We are hoping that this will be done very soon. We know that the people of Saskatchewan and across Canada want to be able to travel and they want to be able to show that they’re vaccinated so we are pushing the federal government as much as we can to be able to get that document done.”

The hope is that there will be a solidified plan within the next three to four weeks.

When it comes to travelling inter-provincially, plans are also in the works.

“If you go to another province and they require that you prove that you were vaccinated to get into a venue or something like that, we’re working on making something available as well,” Merriman said.

When asked if there has been any change of plans to make proof of vaccinations mandatory at large scale events such as Roughrider games, Merriman says he didn’t want the government to get “heavy handed” when it comes to vaccination rules in the province.

“We’ve got a very high vaccination rate in our province, we are doing extremely well,” he said. “I think that we are getting to that point where we don’t need to have proof of vaccination and I wouldn’t want somebody to not be able to access a certain business because they don’t have a vaccine card on them.

“I think we are going to leave it to the individual business or the event sponsors discretion.”