City isn’t cancelling any events yet due to COVID-19; has plans in place

Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health reported Thursday there is now one confirmed presumptive case of COVID-19 in Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon. There is one reported death in Canada related to COVID-19.

It was announced Thursday the Juno Awards gala and Juno week festivities in Saskatoon would be cancelled related to concerns around COVID-19.

Mayer Bater said the city is having meetings every day in preparedness planning for the pandemic.

The city and town are working together with other partners discussing plans for the area.

“That’s continually under development. Our joint administrations have been meeting with the Ministry of Health, the local school boards, and local organizations,” Bater said.

The city and town formed a joint administrative committee to cooperatively develop strategies and coordinate efforts to minimize infection risks to residents of both communities and staff members, as reported in a March 9 statement. If a COVID-19 pandemic is declared the two municipalities will “follow the guidance of the provincial and federal government’s authority.”

Mayor Bater said the city’s plan with the town is continually under development, adding he is confident the Battlefords will be prepared in the event COVID-19 becomes an immediate concern here.

“We’ve been working on this for several weeks already,” he said. “The initial draft of the plan came to city council mid-February.”

The mayor said the city predicted a need for a pandemic plan when COVID-19 started to become a global issue.

He noted the city as a municipality is a secondary agency in related to the issue, as the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health acts as the primary agency.

“They are the ones who take a lead when it comes to health-related matters,” Bater said. “Our objective is to ensure that city services are still supplied to people here, especially water, wastewater…so plans are in place to ensure that we can maintain public services through a loss of staff, because we would expect that civil servants would become ill and would have to isolate [if they became ill].”

He added there would also be potential impacts if schools needed to close, as an example, since parents would have to stay home with their children.

The mayor said the city has plans in place to address many possible scenarios that could occur.

The city and town are currently working on a joint plan.

“The importance of that is that we are in a unique situation here in that we have two urban municipalities that are part of one community,” Bater said. “The inter-connectivity between people living in Battleford and North Battleford is daily. So it’s not really possible not to do this together in our view, so that’s why it is really important.”

The mayor added the city is monitoring the situation, saying that “we will update the public if circumstances change.”

Policy/plan passed

The issue was also discussed at city council this week to prepare for the possibility of a pandemic situation in the Battlefords and in the region. Council approved a pandemic emergency policy and plan, and is working with the town of Battleford on a new integrated plan involving both municipalities that will come back to city council March 23.

North Battleford Protective Services/Fire Chief Lindsay Holm also discussed the need to have an updated plan at council’s meeting.

Mayor Bater said the city wants to make sure it has “policies in place to empower administration” to act in the event a pandemic were to happen in the region.

“We really hope we don’t have to implement anything in this plan but we want to be prepared,” he said.

With files from Keaton Brown

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow

by Angela Brown

City isn’t cancelling any events yet due to COVID-19; has plans in place

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