Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Through my Member's statement today, I mentioned that some of our responses for COVID in terms of cases. It's important that we keep our Aboriginal governments up to date because they each have their own populations to deal with, their own people to respond to. This goes to those three presumptive cases that we have, that currently we're looking at. My question is for the Minister of Health and Social Services. My first question is: when will the Department of Health and Social Services let the public know when these presumptive cases are positive or negative?
Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Member for the question. The issue here is that our rapid testing machines are not validated for positive tests because we've had so few positive tests. In fact, none since these machines were procured. The situation is that we need to have them validated by the Alberta lab. There is some transportation time. Then, we get into the queue in the Alberta lab, and they provide us with the results. As soon as those results are known, we will inform everyone via public health advisory, the way we did on Friday with the presumptive cases. I can't speed it up. There are factors beyond our control. We are as anxious as everyone else to hear whether these cases have been validated. In the meantime, we have taken the precaution of treating the presumptive cases as positive cases and responding on that basis for maximum precautions.
Marsi for that response from the Minister. I understand there is an investigation as well. Are there any big updates on this investigation?
I'm not exactly sure what kind of investigation you're asking for an update on. I don't have any more information to share than what I just said.
I came up with some of these questions on the fly, so my apologies for that. My last question is: are we going to be expecting any more cases aside from these three presumptive cases?
I have no way of knowing whether there are going to be additional cases. There was some contact tracing going on, I haven't seen the results of that. If there are additional cases as a result of that the public will be notified through the public health advisory process which we used last week through the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Great Slave.
