Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to start off by reiterating my thanks to public servants who worked very hard during the outbreak here in Yellowknife.
During the outbreak, even constituents who were isolating and were confused were very you know, the very first thing that they always said was how thankful that they were because everybody had a friend who was working long hours, everybody knew somebody who was directly working with the outbreak. So our thanks for that.
My first question for the Minister of Health and Social Services today is who is responsible for COVID communication, and what is the approval process that takes place? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the COVID Secretariat has a small communication staff that provides material to do with the public health orders. And on the other side, the NTHSSA provides communications and materials on the operational side of things, like testing and vaccinations. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it appeared that during the pandemic that there was a large requirement on those two entities to come together and do communication together. There was a lot of influx of calls to Protect NWT, to Public Health, and to the CPHO's office, and there was a need for those to come together and to work in unison.
So how does Health and Social Services or the office of the CPHO ensure that those communicating bodies are able to work together and pass the same and consistent information on to residents. Thank you.
Yes, thank you. These two branches are not in silos. They do speak to one another. The work they're doing is connected.
The perceived lack of consistency is actually because not everyone got the same advice about how long to isolate or how many tests they needed and so on. I found that there's been some confusion between the general advice given to the public and the specific advice given to individuals. And there's been a mixup of those two, and the result is that it looks confusing. And I understand that people did experience it as confusing.
And so I think that there are lessons to be learned going forward about how we can try to make that distinction between individual advice and general advice clearer and sooner. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad that the Minister mentioned "lessons learned" because my next question is about lessons learned and how does the Minister intend to ensure that lessons learned are captured from this outbreak so that we can better prepare how we will communicate future ones. Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's standard for the department, the Health Authority, and the Secretariat to do a debrief after an outbreak is over.
The outbreak at MJ McPherson is not yet over. But when it is, those three entities will meet and will go over what they've learned and what they could do differently next time. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I'm happy to hear that and also happy to participate in any way that might be useful to the department as well if any feedback is useful.
Mr. Speaker, the World Health Organization publishes simple clear documents titled "I just found out I tested positive for 19" and "I just found out I am a contact of positive 19". Straightforward guiding documents like these would have been useful during the Yellowknife outbreak and especially where the Minister did acknowledge that there was some confusion over what category people fell into.
So I'm wondering will Health and Social Services commit to creating guiding documents for residents based on lessons learned from the Yellowknife outbreak that they could use in future ones. Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since the pandemic began, the COVID Secretariat and NTHSSA have created videos, social media material, news releases, FAQs, a range of different kinds of documents that are available on the GNWT COVID19 site. It covers things like selfisolation, testing, vaccination, and so on.
So I wonder if some of the things the Member is looking for is already in place. I'm not familiar with the World Health Organization material.
What we do know is that in the course of the pandemic, information has changed. We've learned so much more, for example, about variants and how infectious they are, that we have been updating our guidance documents to reflect that. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
