What does living with COVID-19 as a society really mean? Here's what experts say
CBC
For Regina parent Miranda Klinger, the pivot to living with COVID will mean doing daily risk assessments and making tough decisions to protect her immunocompromised daughter.
"Kendal is double vaccinated and COVID could still mean hospitalization for her, and that's terrifying," Klinger said.
Saskatchewan officials say they will start treating COVID-19 like other communicable diseases, with Premier Scott Moe pledging he would lift remaining pandemic restrictions in the coming days and weeks.
Canada's chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said all existing public health policies, including provincial vaccine passports, need to be "re-examined" in the coming weeks — because it's clear now that Canada and the rest of the world will be grappling with this virus for months or years to come.
Klinger has four daughters aged 14, 12, 10 and eight who take dance lessons and play competitive sports.
"I'm not sure what the future will look like for us, for things like that," Klinger said in an interview with CBC News. "I don't know what that looks like for them when we don't have those safeties in place for us."
PCR testing in the province is now only available by appointment — with many restrictions on who is eligible — and daily COVID-19 updates have stopped. Instead, the province will issue weekly reports on Thursdays.
Moe said although COVID-19 is not going away, people are done with having to follow public health orders, so "normalizing" the virus and learning to live with it is the achievable option.
"Travel, go to work, have dinner with your friends, go to the movies, go to your kids games — most importantly. You should do all of these things without constantly assessing if your every activity is absolutely necessary. What's necessary is your freedom," Moe said in a video released on social media last week.
Chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab said on Thursday that all residents "need to make decisions going forward based on our personal and family risk and with our understanding of what's happening at the community level."
Klinger said that even if mandates are lifted, her family will continue to wear masks, see other family members outdoors rather than indoors, and refrain from attending indoor activities where there are unmasked people.
"We'll just assess what we need to do and where we're going and what's the most important for our kids and figure it out kind of as we go," Klinger said.
Dr. Cory Neudorf is the Saskatchewan Health Authority's interim senior medical health officer and a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan. He said living with COVID means having a more thorough understanding of the virus and knowing how we have to adapt when we have waves coming through our community.
"It doesn't mean ignoring it. It doesn't mean pretending it doesn't exist," Neudorf told CBC News.
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