Jordan
We’ve done this dance before; we’ve done it in every corner of the country, and everyone is tired of it, except the virus.
News Clips
…in the last seven days, Yukon had a higher rate of active cases than any province or territory in the country…
…to respond to this unprecedented spike in cases and increased risk of transmission, our government has declared a state of emergency…
…in other jurisdictions, you can just have soup delivered to your door, you can have groceries delivered to your door. We don’t have those luxuries here…
Jordan
Today, Yukon, another Canadian province or territory that had weathered the COVID-19 pandemic well, with a focus on public health restrictions on vaccination and on communities working together. This approach had worked so well, in fact, that in late summer, public health decided to end almost all restrictions, including masking mandates, capacity limits and social distancing. And now, a little while later, the territory’s healthcare system is facing capacity issues. ICU patients will need to be flown to Vancouver and Edmonton. And if things get a little worse, there’s no telling how many lives could be lost. What lessons are there to be learned up north? And does this have to happen in every province and territory before anyone else can learn from it?
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is the Big Story. Jackie Hong is a reporter for CBC North in Whitehorse, Yukon. Hello, Jackie. How’s it going out there?
Jackie
It’s cold up here. How are you?
Jordan
I’m all right. It’s actually cold down here, too, but I have a feeling that you’ll laugh at me for the type of cold I’m concerned with. Listen, you guys are in the middle of a wave that maybe nobody thought would come this fall and winter, is that fair to say? Or at least a wave that nobody thought would be as bad as it’s been?
Jackie
I think it’s fair to say that everyone was hoping it wouldn’t be as bad. I think we were seeing some signs in the past couple of weeks, but I think a lot of Yukoners were hoping against hope that we wouldn’t get to this place again.
Jordan
Well, Yukon is one of the places in Canada that we had actually yet to do a COVID episode about, and it’s mostly because you guys have done remarkably well through this entire pandemic. Can you give me a sense of how Yukon or Whitehorse, even in particular, has done through the first 18 months I guess, before cases started to ramp up this fall?
Jackie
For sure. So the Yukon had actually done fairly well overall. At one point, we had the highest vaccination rate in the country, if not the continent. And we had actually been under a state of emergency that was lifted in August, meaning we basically were living life almost like normal, almost like pre pandemic times. We did have a couple of blips here and there. But overall, we were doing great.
Jordan
And tell me about how this wave started, maybe when it started and how bad it’s gotten. And I think for those of us in the rest of the country who look through the lens of maybe bigger cities pretty often, give us a sense of what the scale is like for a spike in a place like Yukon.
Jackie
For sure. I guess the thing that’s really triggered this wave is the variants. Although we were doing great overall, we did see COVID kind of start targeting unvaccinated populations and kind of ripping through them. So we saw some of our smaller communities get hit over the summer, and that’s just kind of ramped up as Delta has really gotten a hold in the Yukon. Schools were also back to in person learning, and we’ve seen exposure notice after exposure notice for elementary schools, in particular, where the kids are too young to get vaccinated. And the spike that ultimately triggered this new state of emergency was just more than 80 cases over the course of three days. And over the past week we’ve had about 160 new cases.
Now, I know that doesn’t sound like a lot for folks in Vancouver or Toronto or Calgary or Montreal, but you have to remember, the Yukon has a total population of just more than 43,000 people. So 160 cases over the past seven days means we have the highest rate of infection in the country if you look at it in terms of per 100,000. So we’re at 375 per 100,000, the next highest in terms of provinces or territories based on that rate is the Northwest Territories, which is at 143, and followed by Manitoba, which is just at 84.
Jordan
You touched on it a little bit, but maybe if you could elaborate a little bit more, what changed from the summer to the fall that may have driven the spike? I know nobody is going to have concrete answers, but you mentioned the easing of restrictions and in person learning. Do we know where the cases are coming from or what’s behind this rise?
Jackie
So I guess the one thing that’s been fuelling cases is travel right? Like COVID doesn’t jump borders. COVID doesn’t go into BC and come back. It’s basically been people who have been traveling and bringing COVID into the territory. Like I said, when the original state of emergency was lifted back in August, we had zero restrictions. So that means no mask mandate. That means no limits on gatherings. For a while, bars and restaurants were back at full capacity. There were live music events like concerts happening at bars. There was no social distancing. I think people were also feeling more comfortable.
Earlier in the pandemic, there had been a lot of messaging of don’t travel to these remote communities, and just to contextualize it a bit, of the 43,000 people in the territory, the vast majority, I think probably three quarters are in Whitehorse. Whitehorse is really the hub, and there was a lot of messaging of don’t travel to these smaller communities. But a lot of these smaller places do rely on Whitehorse to get groceries or for people who want to go to restaurants. People come into Whitehorse for that. So I think there was a lot more traveling happening again.
For a while, we had a requirement where if you came into the territory, no matter if you were vaccinated, no matter what, you had to self isolate for 14 days. Of course, the science is still developing. We’re still looking at kind of long term trends, but all of those changes started happening semi recently, and we’ve seen cases kind of sort of creep up again over the past couple of months.
Jordan
When you say that restaurants and bars were open with no social distancing and no mask mandates, and there were concerts, you’re describing a pre COVID bar scene. Is that right? Because that both excites and obviously given the results, terrifies me.
Jackie
Yeah, it was basically pre-COVID. So when we were under the previous COVID restrictions, we had things like you can only seat six people at a table and all the tables had to be 2 meters apart. And there was no bar service, like there was only table service. But yeah, for a while there, restaurants were, and I guess they still are at 100% capacity. You can have as many people as you want a table. Like people were dancing again. Like I said, there were live concerts. So we had live bands on a stage and like, hundreds of people in front, like not distancing, dancing. I remember going to one and looking for a friend and just weaving through a crowd and being surprised, but also terrified.
Jordan
Were people still wearing masks? I know the mandate was lifted, but in your experience, being in those big, crowded rooms?
Jackie
Some people were still choosing to wear masks. And I’d say, especially at grocery stores, you would see a lot of people still masked up, even though it wasn’t required. But at bars and restaurants and stuff, just based on my own experience, I’d say most people were unmasked.
Jordan
One of the reasons we wanted to talk to you about what’s going on up there is because I know that when COVID spikes in rural areas, it can create much bigger problems. Not that spikes in Toronto or places like that aren’t problems, but can create much more of the kind of infrastructure problems we’re not used to seeing in big cities. So what does concern public health officials out there about the rate of growth beyond just people getting sick? I imagine there’s limited capacity for that.
Jackie
There are kind of two big things that are working against us up here, which is geography and healthcare resources. So once again, Yukon has a population of 43,000, but we’re spread out over an area the size of Spain. So the vast majority of people are here in Whitehorse. But we have all these remote communities that are basically serviced by health care centres or hubs, and they are hours and hours away from a hospital.
When it comes to hospitals, we have three in the entire territory, but only one, and that’s the one in Whitehorse, is really equipped to handle intensive care situations. And even then, there’s been kind of some legal cases over COVID restrictions. And the government in some of its responses has said that the hospital here in Whitehorse can only safely manage five COVID patients requiring ventilators at one time. And even then, there’s only a three to four day supply of oxygen.
And even though Whitehorse can provide intensive care, it’s only to a certain capacity. And once we hit that capacity, people need to be MedEvac-ed south. So Vancouver is the main hub, sometimes Edmonton. But usually people get flown down to Vancouver if things get really bad.
Jordan
How labor intensive, resource intensive, cost intensive is it to have to move everybody that gets sick either from a rural area to a hospital or if they get sicker from Whitehorse to Vancouver or Edmonton?
Jackie
It can be pretty intensive. So of course, the cost is covered by the government, thankfully. But let’s say you’re in Dawson City, which I think is the other Yukon community most people have heard of. You’re basically a five hour drive away from Whitehorse. So if you get sick up there, you either hop on a plane or you get an ambulance that drives you all the way. If you’re getting flown down to Vancouver, that’s kind of a minimum at least two hour flight. Once again, they have to either prepare a plane or a helicopter, get that medical team so that you can be supported for the 2 hours you’re in the air, at least kept stable until you get to Vancouver. So it is quite a process.
Jordan
So what has the government done then, given that lack of resources, what have they done to clamp down on this surge before it does get to the point where you’re flying several people to Vancouver?
Jackie
The government here actually declared, or I guess, redeclared a state of emergency last Monday. So about a week ago, and that only actually began being enforced on Saturday. But with the state of emergency comes a couple of reintroduction of measures that I mentioned before. So once again, masks are mandatory in indoor public spaces. When it comes to gatherings, we’re back to limits. So ten people indoors spread between two households. And that’s assuming everyone is vaccinated. If everyone in that group is not vaccinated, then you get limited to only one household. For organized events, we’re back down to 25 people inside, 50 people outside, organized events being weddings, funerals.
And this is new for us, we’ll need proof of vaccination to get service at bars and restaurants. Tables are once again limited to six people only, and we’ll need to show proof of vaccination to participate in group sports or other recreational events.
Jordan
How have Yukoners handled, so far, during the pandemic, the public health restrictions, and have we seen the kind of aggression, I guess, for lack of a better term, towards them? And is that changing now? I know mandates especially are the type of necessary step that gets called controversial by a lot of people and can often bring out a pretty nasty response.
Jackie
Overall, Yukoners have been pretty good about public health measures, which is why we were doing so well for so long. We did kind of have some tickets issued under the last state of emergency, but like I mentioned, we were mostly doing okay.
With the vaccine mandate we’ve seen some, like you mentioned, a little bit of resistance. That’s been kind of interesting. So the opposition Yukon Party has been very critical of the introduction of any sort of vaccine mandate. And we actually had our former Conservative candidate for the federal election, who got booted out from the party just before the election, he actually presented a petition in the legislative assembly last month that was signed, I think, by just more than 1000 people. And there were some duplicate signatures, but opposed to any sort of vaccine mandate.
And dozens of people filled up the Legislative Assembly, which is the first time since pre COVID that many people have shown up in the public Gallery and they were a little bit disruptive. There was some applause. There was some cheering. They actually had to pause proceedings because people were just being too rowdy in the public Gallery. And there’s been a weekly protest at one of the intersections in downtown again opposed to any sort of vaccine mandate. So we are starting to see a little bit of resistance. There is a little bit of vaccine doubt, I would say, as well amongst some populations. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag right now.
Jordan
What about in the legislature itself? I imagine most of our listeners and to be fair, myself, don’t know much about Yukon politics. You mentioned the Yukon Party is opposed to mandates. Is there a broad agreement on the measures being put in place right now? Is this a political issue?
Jackie
So the Yukon government is currently a minority Liberal government. So we have essentially three parties here. The Yukon Liberals, the Yukon Party, which I would say kind of works a bit like the Conservative Party in other parts of the country and the Yukon NDP. Both the NDP and the Yukon Party have said they support the state of emergency. They support this reintroduction of measures, having seen how the cases have spiked. But what’s kind of interesting is the Yukon NDP has kind of been asking about measures for a while now.
So the State of emergency was called last Monday. I was in the Legislative Assembly before and the leader of the Yukon NDP was saying, why don’t we have a mask mandate? We’re the only jurisdiction in Canada at this point that doesn’t have one, which was true at the time. So the Yukon NDP supports the reintroduction of measures, the state of emergency. But it’s kind of saying, why didn’t we have any measures in place earlier? Why did we have to get to this point?
The Yukon Party has said that they support this new state of emergency, given the cases, given the situation. But again, they’ve been a little critical about transparency and how exactly the government is making its decisions. What advice exactly It’s getting from the chief medical officer of health or acting chief medical officer of Health. And like I mentioned, they’ve kind of come out swinging against any sort of vaccine mandate.
Jordan
What are we watching for in terms of timelines here? You mentioned that some of the new restrictions just went into enforcement on the weekend. Has public health or the chief medical officer of health offered any guidance in terms of how long it might take to turn this thing around, how close we are to the edge where things could get exponential and we’re talking about flying people to ICUs?
Jackie
The current state of emergency, the government has said it’s going to be in place until December 3. So it’s kind of a wait and see situation. Will these measures help clamp everything down? Will we start seeing a nice decline in cases? Will cases keep ramping up? And at that point, will we need to introduce more restrictions to get those numbers down? So we’re in a little bit of a holding pattern here until December 3 just to see what happens.
Jordan
Jackie, we’ll cross our fingers for you and hopefully everything calms down there. And hopefully, as I say to all of our guests now, this is the last time we have a conversation about COVID waves.
Jackie
Oh, man. If I never have to say COVID-19 again, I would be a very happy reporter.
Jordan
Thanks so much for this.
Jackie
My pleasure.
Jordan
Jackie Hong of CBC north. That was the big story. For more from us. Head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. Talk to us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. Find us by email at thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. As always, you can find us on your favourite podcast player: Apple, Google, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Cast Box. Whichever one you use, we’ll be there. Please rate and review and tell a friend.
Thanks for listening, I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, we’ll talk tomorrow.
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