Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my Member's statement was on COVID19 and what are our safety precautions going forward, and it was for the COVID Secretariat, the Premier. Mr. Speaker, my residents and my leadership in Nunakput are concerned that travellers are coming from outside the territory, are not getting COVID tested before coming into our smaller communities out of Yellowknife into Ulukhaktok. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I'll start with saying that there's a couple factors with that. The transportation of airlines is governed by Canada, regulated under by Transport Canada, and right now they have, I think it was October they started and at the end of November so we're there, all passengers who fly on their airline have to now be vaccinated, so that is one method of controlling COVID spread. However, I know that there was a request from Ulukhaktok to get testing when people get on the planes. So there's a couple things with that as well. There's that Ulukhaktok has one of the highest rates they're really doing well; they have 91 percent fully vaccinated. 95 percent are partially vaccinated. We don't have the testing capacity to do every community right now. And there's false negatives and false positives and so it's not a matter of getting a test and being safe. That leads people to the assumption that they can just go about business. No one's allowed to isolate in small communities. They have to isolate in the regional centres. Or the hub communities such as Ulukhaktok would be Inuvik or Yellowknife if they're coming through here. At this point we're telling people that the best precaution against COVID is get vaccinated, wear your mask, keep your bubble small, stay home if you're sick. And keep six meters of space between you. So, again, we don't want to set up false expectations that someone gets tested and they're safe, because that's not the truth. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought it being Yellowknife, it would be an automatic yes to get a testing machine at the airport. We have a $20 million revolving fund, maybe we can use some of that to use it. The thing is, Mr. Speaker, our communities are small where you going to go? Soon as you're going to get medevaced out of the community or why wasn't that same concern brought up in Tuk, why weren't they shipped out into Inuvik in the isolation centre? You're telling me one of my outside communities are able and the other one's not? So kind of where we're going with this, Mr. Speaker, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A couple questions there, I'll try to answer them. The reality is when an outbreak does hit a community such as Tuk was hit, we don't move people outside once the community has already been infected with the COVID19. What we do is we try to isolate that community, that's happened in all of our smaller communities, and we've been able to contain it.
One of the best defenses, as I stated, was six feet, not six meters, correction on that one. But every when we first saw COVID first hit, we asked our departments to make sure that every local community government had a plan on how to deal with COVID. So what I would say is Ulukhaktok, if they don't have a plan on how to deal with a community outbreak, please contact me and we will make sure that we work with them to make sure that they have a plan so that if COVID hits, they will know what to do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Every community has a community plan in regards to COVID right now. That's not the question. The question is will the Premier commit to getting people putting more responsibility on the airline to say, Okay, here's a piece of paper I got COVID test. If they have that COVID test they could fly out of Ulu or fly from Yellowknife to Ulu, for the safety and being resolved I guess to my leadership in the community because people are worried. So thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that goes back to the first question about getting testing and airlines, at this point we're not looking at doing that because that is not it is not a guarantee that if you get tested that you do not have COVID. That's why we ask people to be tested on day one, day eight, day ten, depending on their orders, is because you can get a false negative or a false positive and, again, we don't want to set up the communities to think that everybody who gets off the plane is safe, because that is not the truth. So it's all of us have a responsibility. This pandemic is turning to an endemic and so we all have a responsibility to make sure that we keep our bubble small and we do the best we can to protect our communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Honourable Premier. Final supplementary, Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, because it's travel and NWT, will it make people pay themselves $262.50 to get tested? So, Mr. Speaker, going back can the Premier provide a "lessons learned" of COVID-19 and how her COVID Secretariat has can be I guess improved and to have response teams going into the communities instead of the way this pandemic, when it first hit, my leadership was put to the test and they did good but at the end of the day, we need the help. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Absolutely, we'll be doing a "lessons learned." I mean, we didn't know what we were getting into when we got COVID. We don't know whether we would make it or not. The reality is that it is becoming an endemic and we have to learn with this so we will be doing a lessons learned once we get figure out if it's going to keep coming or not.
But along the way, Mr. Speaker, we have not been not learning from our experiences. Every single community that's got hit by COVID has taught us things. And every time we get a community that does have an outbreak, we try to look at what are some of the areas that we did really well, what are some of the areas we need to work on. And so the next community that does get hit, and honestly, Mr. Speaker, we do better. But I do say that the community governments themselves have done phenomenal. So it's community governments, it's Indigenous governments, it's the GNWT, and it's every resident working together that has brought us to where we are with COVID today. And thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes
