The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses believe that Thursday’s masking and social distancing mandates issued by the provincial government could have been prevented.

Mandatory masking was one thing that they’ve been advising for weeks now says President Tracy Zambory.

There were a few concerns from the news conference from Zambory’s perspective. One of the things that she found troubling was the lack of clarification on the vaccine passport or the QR code, she noted that this something that this needs to be described with clarity and wasn’t sure the Premier accomplished that.

Zambory was also concerned that the provincial government already established an end date for mandatory masking and wonders how the Saskatchewan government was able to established the end of October as a possible conclusion to mandatory masking. “How do we know that date is going to be a date that we should do that.”  Zambory adds. “We need to be looking at  how have the system improved, How has health care improved in Saskatchewan, is the system able to lift itself back up from this critical level that we’re in, are the numbers of COVID going up or down?”

With the masking mandates issued once again in the province, Zambory believes that the onus is now on the public to help overcome the pandemic. “We all have to be wearing our masks, we all have to be following the rules as they have been set out to us now.”