By Chris Brown

Pushing province for answers

City wants its essential workers moved up vaccine schedule

Mar 24, 2021 | 4:54 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The City of Medicine Hat wants to hear more about when all its essential workers will be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine from the province.

Merrick Brown says that’s not just police officers and firefighters, but also water treatment plant and power plant operators and power linemen.

“They may not be necessarily in the public eye and working directly with the public but they provide a critical service to the city that provides life safety,” says Brown, the city’s director of emergency management.

“When you start looking at electricity or clean water, even though they’re not actually delivering that service directly to the public in their eye, they’re still delivering that service outside of the public’s eye. So they’re still an essential service no different than a firefighter no different than a police officer.”

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Front-line police officers are included in Phase 2C, which has no definite timeline but will only happen once Phase 2A and 2B are completed.

The province is currently in Phase 2A of its vaccination plan, focused on older Albertans and workers at senior care facilities.

Phase 2B is focused on people with health conditions and only some occupations are part of Phase 2C

“We’ve been really wanting what we’re calling essential services – which includes our firefighters, police officers, even water treatment plant operators, power plant operators, all of these that we deem as essential workers – to be included further up within the vaccine schedule,” says Brown.

Other provinces have taken a different approach and have included such workers earlier in their vaccine schedules, Brown adds.

Brown has been making his case to the Alberta Emergency Management Agency and essential service associations have also been pushing for sooner eligibility for their members.