Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I'm wondering if the Minister can speak to what work is being done to evaluate the demands on the NWT healthcare system to manage healthcare expectation and catch up required due to COVID19. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Member for that question. This is a topic that is on the mind of many residents of the NWT.
We are aware that people haven't had the same access to services that they may have had in the past for a variety of reasons. We've had staff who have been sick or in isolation. We have staff who've been committed to the pandemic effort. And so the result is in some cases we have fallen behind. The NTHSSA is right now working to identify areas where we need to enhance our capacity or bring new resources to focus on developing a plan to catch up for things like cancer surgeries, endoscopies, and core public health issues such as vaccinations of other types than COVID. So this is an issue that we are aware of, and we're working to resolve. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm wondering if in this work health is reevaluating how and who provides services. Examples of this would be maybe someone with a nursing degree is doing a role that doesn't require a nursing degree. Potentially other provinces and states are currently looking at expanding athome testing kits to include not only HIV but STIs as well. And so is that type of work being done as part of this? Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. One of the game changers during this pandemic has been virtual healthcare. I'm sure most people in this room have had a virtual appointment with a healthcare practitioner or a mental health counsellor, and it certainly has opened the possibility of care without having to leave home, which many people appreciate.
We also do, as the Member has said, have people in new roles and that has prompted us to look at things like the scope of practice, whether people are working to the scope of their practice or whether, in fact, we need to change the skill mix to provide care more efficiently. So these are lessons that we are reflecting on now and we expect to respond to. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. One question that has come up quite a bit actually as MLA for Kam Lake are questions regarding the backlog of surgeries, specifically elective surgeries that aren't considered urgent but do add to the quality of life and the ability of different residents to be able to go grocery shopping, leave their homes, return to work. And so I'm wondering how Health and Social Services intends to address the backlog of elective surgeries in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So it's true that early in the pandemic some surgeries were postponed. And during this most recent outbreak, the Omicron outbreak, there was a period of about three weeks where Stanton again postponed elective surgeries, especially if they'd require a hospital stay because they were trying to preserve the hospital beds for people who were admitted because of COVID. But these surgeries have since resumed, and following this most recent outbreak, there's a triage of the elective surgery list going on with prioritization and scheduling happening as soon as possible. So I expect that residents who are waiting for elective surgeries will hear from healthcare professionals as soon as possible about when they can expect their procedure to happen. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for that. I think that there are residents who will be very happy to hear that.
My last question for the Minister is in regards to cost. Cost of COVID has been quite extreme everywhere, not just in the Northwest Territories. And I think when we first began this, we were counting down the days until we could wipe COVID costs clear off the books, but the reality of it is that there still will be a cost to managing and dealing with COVID because people are still expected to do the work that goes with that. And so I'm wondering if the Minister has a dollar figure as to what the expected cost increase to the NWT healthcare system will be to maintain COVID health requirements and services here in the territory? Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question, but at this time, I don't have a specific dollar figure. What we're trying to work out is what kind of increase in our public health capacity we need to continue doing testing, contact tracing, vaccinations, and managing outbreaks. And so it's so difficult to tell exactly what kind of resources we're going to need for that. And here's why:
Since the Omicron variant, we've had 6,000 cases in the NWT, three times as many as we had prior to the beginning of Omicron. So the amount of staff that has been involved in responding to that outbreak has been enormous, and many of the staff themselves have been affected by this outbreak. So this is an area that we are trying to plan for, and we recognize there are some significant challenges because of the uncertainty of what future outbreaks will be like and what they will require. We just have to consider the difference between the impact of Delta and the impact of Omicron to understand how variable COVID19 responses are. But having said that, we are certainly prepared, within the coming week or two, to share our preliminary thinking with Regular Members about what kind of resources we need to manage COVID as an endemic disease. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
