Medicine Hat director of emergency management Merrick Brown giving council the latest update on the COVID-19 situation.--Screen shot courtesy City of Medicine Hat
Hatters are either meeting or beating the provincial average rates for vaccination rates across all age categories, according to data released Monday by the provincial government.
“Positive things are occurring,” said Merrick Brown, the city’s director of emergency management, during his COVID update to city council.
Medicine Hat is running from between being equal to or exceeding the provincial average for residents between 20 and 75 years or older.
But it’s those who received at least their first vaccine between the ages of 12 and 19 that Brown says is far and away the most impressive.
Provincially, that rate is 16 per cent with the city seeing 39 per cent of those school-age youth receiving vaccinations.
“I commend our teenagers,” said Brown.
Issues with city staff absenteeism linked to COVID is also on the decline, according to Brown, and the city’s overall positive cases also down.
“So there is some hope to this,” Brown told councillors.
But he also said caution should be maintained in the near term as, “things can turn very quickly.”
He noted the province does not provide any advance information to municipal emergency managers so he can’t predict the future when it comes to changes to the scheduled easing of restrictions.
Brown also highlighted the latest restrictions were tied to a date and not statistics related to COVID and so, “what that actually means, nobody really knows.”
But the growing rate of those being vaccinated in the city is cause for recognition with Mayor Ted Clugston saying it “makes me extremely proud to be mayor of this city.”
He credited Medicine Hat’s “can-do spirit” in achieving the high vaccination rates while lamenting what’s “been an exceptionally tough year.”
But Clugston didn’t have such high praise for the federal government, criticizing it for its handling of the vaccine rollout.
