“We’re getting hit really, really hard,” Saskatoon Tribal Chief Mark Arcand told Global News.
He was speaking about the staff at the Saskatoon Tribal Council’s (STC) Emergency Wellness Centre. The Saskatchewan Government declared a COVID-19 outbreak at the site on Jan. 21.
Nearly all the agencies that shelter homeless and vulnerable people in Saskatoon are dealing with outbreaks.
The STC centre, the YWCA Crisis Shelter and the Brief and Social Detox Unit are just some of the facilities listed on the Government of Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 outbreak list in the past week.
But representatives told Global News they’re still able to deliver services.
Though he didn’t know the exact number of staff who are sick, Arcand said the centre was managing by having part-time and casual workers fill in for the full-time employees who aren’t able to come to work because of COVID-19.
He said the centre is still at (and over) capacity and still providing services, albeit slower than normal because workers are adjusting to their new roles.
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“They’re just coming in blind,” he said, “saying, ‘OK, you got to fill in here. Are you going to do this?’”
Arcand said he believes Omicron is spreading through the city’s vulnerable population because it is very transmissible and because not all homeless and vulnerable people are vaccinated.
“If they’re Indigenous people, they know the government hasn’t treated them too well,” he said. “There’s been a lot of negative systems and they may not trust government.”
He told Global News working with vulnerable people requires accommodating their sensitivities and beliefs.
“We don’t judge them, we don’t treat them any different. Our services are still there,” he said.
At a provincial COVID-19 briefing, Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency president Marlo Pritchard said the government is seeing a small increase in the number of vulnerable people needing to be housed at assisted self-isolation sites (ASIS) because of the disease.
“Although most of the shelters are able to manage (the outbreaks) within their own protocols, we are seeing a slight increase in individuals from the shelters accessing our ASIS hotels,” he said.
Carla Delgado, the engagement and development director at the YWCA, said the crisis shelter is still full and is delivering services as usual.
“We’re operating as normal with the current safety measures that we have in place… we haven’t, thankfully, shut any rooms down or turned anyone away due to the outbreak,” she said, in a phone interview.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, which runs the Brief detox unit, said “at this point staff are managing caseloads and incoming demands” without disruption to services.
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The Salvation Army Crossroads Centre, the Meewinsota CFR, a halfway house, and Interval House, a temporary shelter for women and children, are also listed on the outbreak site.
The Salvation Army did not provide a comment by publishing deadline.
A representative for Meewinsota declined to comment and no one from Interval house responded to Global News’ calls.
Delgado said the YWCA staff will keep working to keep the crisis shelter (and transitional housing sites) open.
“We are always at capacity. And unfortunately, that is too bad because there is a huge need of it,” she said.
Arcand said he hopes the Omicron wave fades away in the next few weeks so “we can get back to the proper work of helping people… and making sure that everybody’s being safe.”
“If you’re homeless or vulnerable,(you need) to be safe out there.”
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