Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of health. I know that we have some great homecare and home support staff, and I'm sure they're providing as much information to the seniors and elders in my community that are on their homecare list, but not all seniors in my community are on that list. I want to know if the department can make sure that, if, or when, we have this second wave, some information packages can be put together so that we can have them in the public, even for constituency office, so we can deliver this information out to seniors to help them what they need to do to be safe during the pandemic. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Absolutely. Right now, we are going through this first wave of COVID. We are learning from some of the things that we are doing, therefore, allows us to better inform residents of the Northwest Territories. It is important and communication is key. Especially if we are moving into the summer months, the fall, and the flu pandemic is coming. Information will be provided on vaccines and that is important. We are currently having discussions with the federal Ministers on perhaps having a flu vaccine available earlier so that we can have protection for our seniors.
Can the Minister maybe have her homecare staff or some other staff within the community that really work with a lot of the elders and boots-to-the-ground frontline staff to gather more lists of names, especially if we do go into the second wave of this pandemic? This is just to make sure there is someone checking on them, even though now they may not have that need, but during that, they may need that.
Another absolutely. It is important that our home and community care workers work hard in the communities. We are looking at extending hours. We will be talking about the home and community care review after rise of the House today. There are some recommendations in the review that Members will be happy, and they'll be supporting because some of the work that is in the review, in the recommendations, we're already doing. I think our home community care in the communities work hard. Right now, we need to look at some of their hours, because I have been hearing that elders don't go to sleep after 5:00, or they don't wake up at 9:00. We recognize that, and I think that is important.
Thank you to the Minister for that. I always want to protect the elders because we know that they're vulnerable, and they're immunocompromised, and they're our elders. We were raised to protect them once we got older. That was what we do. I understand the reason behind closing the visiting to long-term care area like when there is an outbreak of flu, and now with the pandemic, but a lot of our elders don't have long to live in some of our long-term care facilities. Can the Minister explain if there is a process for immediate family that can visit their loved ones now during this pandemic? If there is, can you explain that?
We watched what was happening across Canada and where seniors were passing on as a result of not tightening up rules. That really sent a message to us here in the Northwest Territories, so we acted really quick to make sure that we restricted some of the access to our long-term care centres. We put measure in place where basically the visiting hours were really quite restricted. That was done for the safety of the elders, that was done for the safety of our workers.
I look around now within social media and you see innovative ways of how people are visiting their elders. They're taking pictures through the windows of the long-term care centres. They're visiting that way. Even some of the elders are wanting Facebook and just to find ways to communicate, FaceTime. There are so many different ways that we can communicate with our elders that are in care with the family. There are ways that are safe for both. That's our primary concern right now.
Thank you Minister. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I appreciate that the department is taking that serious and I know that the workers in the long-term care really care for the elders. We don't want them getting sick, but it is hard to see that when they can't connect. We have to do what's right and that's the thing, the highest population in Canada that we're losing to COVID is seniors. I thank the health department for that.
What I would like to know is: what needs to happen during this pandemic or after the pandemic? Have you thought that far ahead yet on what needs to take place to start lifting these measures? Again, I'm not saying we're going to put them at risk right now but so families can start to kind of get a sense of, "This is what needs to happen before I actually can sit and hold my mom and my dad or my grandparents."
Like I mentioned, we are still in the first wave. We are looking forward to a second wave. We're easing up wisely. We're loosening some of the things. We'll do a big announcement tomorrow that some folks might be happy with, some folks might not be happy with. Can't please everyone, but we're going to do the announcement anyways.
The Member is asking: when will we start to lift restrictions for our elders and for our seniors? My quick answer would be: let's find a vaccine, then we can start to look at lifting some restrictions. Right now, it's not safe. There are some exceptions that our department is doing in order to ensure that we have family somehow visit or somehow interact with the elders that are in care. One of the things we have asked people to do is to be outside. Start utilizing the outside. Hopefully, that's in our phase 2, tomorrow, we'll see. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
