Emails show province resisted issuing PSA after COVID-19 cases at Roughriders home opener
CBC
The Saskatchewan Roughriders' 2021 season home opener was supposed to be the province's summer celebration and a reward for beating back COVID-19.
Saskatchewan had lifted all COVID-19 public health restrictions less than a month ahead of the game on Aug. 6. By the end of the event, 32,975 people had poured into Mosaic Stadium. There were no masking restrictions and no proof of vaccination was required.
A week later the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) issued an exposure warning. People with COVID-19 had attended the game and the SHA said they were likely infectious when they did so.
The province would eventually confirm at least nine cases tied to the game, but declined to declare it a COVID-19 outbreak, despite it meeting the definition of an outbreak on the province's website.
The details of the province's conversations on how to respond to the emerging COVID-19 cases are contained in 47 pages of emails released to CBC in response to a freedom of information request filed with the Ministry of Health.
The documents show officials with the provincial government debating whether to issue a public service announcement (PSA) about the cases, executives with the Saskatchewan Roughriders weighing in on the emerging public health issue and Dr. Saqib Shahab advocating for the use of a proof of vaccination policy long before the province adopted it.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders and the provincial government declined to provide on-camera interviews for this story.
Instead, they offered prepared statements to questions provided by CBC News.
As Saskatchewan began tracing COVID-19 cases back to the Roughriders game, there were internal discussions about issuing a public service announcement.
Officials with the SHA wrote on Aug. 11 that the authority was planning to issue a PSA after a case was detected in the Pil Country end zone section of Mosaic Stadium.
The Ministry of Health went back and forth in the next few days on whether to issue a PSA as more cases were found.
Only two cases had been confirmed when Melissa Kimens, the executive director of the Ministry of Health's COVID response unit, wrote to her colleagues that she had confirmed "NO PSA" was to be issued on Aug. 12.
It's not clear from the emails why that decision was made.
The province's tone would quickly change as more cases were detected. A third confirmed case was reported less than two hours after the "NO PSA" email was issued.
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