When it comes to COVID-19 preventative strategies, hope is not a plan and the wait-and-see approach can be disastrous.

Gravelbourg local physicians Dr. Larita Ramlakhan, along with her husband, Dr. Intheran Pillay explain the reasons why the medical community approached the town council in March, urging the community to take immediate action saying,

“The primary reason Dr. Pillay and I chose to be proactive was the carnage we were witnessing being inflicted by COVID 19 in Europe. Europe was a month ahead of us in terms of the pandemic and the effects were devastating. It was a nightmare unfolding in real-time, especially in Italy. The concern we had is that these were also first world countries with national health care like Canada and they were drowning in the tsunami that was COVID 19. There was a deluge of critically ill patients and hundreds of patients dying daily. The medical system was collapsing, and it was obvious that they were not going to win the battle without losing thousands of its citizens. The medical experts in Italy and the WHO implored the rest of the world to take notice and learn from the costly mistakes that were made. The message was simple: There is no cure. There is no vaccine and no effective antiviral drugs. The only thing that will be effective is to self isolate, cancel public gatherings, shut down nonessential services, meticulous hand hygiene, and social distancing.”

It did not take long for the Mayor, Robert Bowler, CAO Joan Corneil, and the rest of the council to take this advice and act swiftly. With the immediate declaration of a local state of emergency, EMO coordinator, Matt Forest, community stakeholders, along with RCMP formed the EMO team.

Dr. Pillay agrees and echoes,

“We thought that if we instituted those measures like a tailored pandemic plan within our community, other communities might learn from that, and we would hopefully save the community from experiencing deaths. We saw how this virus was just increasing exponentially in terms of causing illness and how people were infected worldwide. We had a chance to try and prevent a huge spike in numbers if we intervened early so that is what motivated us to act early.”

Another serious worry for the doctors was the vulnerability of the integrated facility at St. Joseph’s hospital. There are 50 long-term care residents along with nine-bed acute care without an ICU and ventilators; three physicians and a small pool of nursing, EMS, lab and auxiliary staff.

The medical team felt there was no way that they had the capacity and reserves to manage a large outbreak in Gravelbourg and maintain quality medical services.

With that being the primary concern, the Executive Director of the local hospital, Désirée Brisebois implemented safety checks that were put into the system in a timely way that played an important role in communicating with the medical staff and ensuring those measures happened.

Dr. Pillay expands further,

“Désirée Brisebois has played an important role in terms of keeping our facility safe, keeping our workers safe and keeping the patients safe, especially in long term care. She has instituted several measures much sooner than elsewhere in the province. For instance, the lockdown of the facility has been in effect for approximately a month now and she thought about the personal protection equipment of staff as well as us, long before it became a recommendation from the health authority.”

One of the challenges the hospital is trying to manage is to effectively unify the staff. Dr. Pillay adds,

“One area that is a challenge in what we are trying to accomplish in the hospital is to cohort staff so that they don't work at multiple facilities, and that they just work at one facility to limit the spread of the coronavirus. That requires cooperation and it is a complex thing and requires several groups to agree including the unions, so I am hoping that we will see some help from the Saskatchewan Health Authority. That is challenging, and I think it will go a long way to protect our residents in long term care.”

It takes a whole team and community residents to work together and achieve results to flatten the curve. Swift Current Online news has already featured a few articles on examples of how the town of Gravelbourg has initiated many volunteer groups to assist those in need, such as Community Connections, Relief Fund Auction and, Project Masks, to name a few.

The medical team has added to the list of services provided for the community and surrounding areas by live steaming via Facebook a question-and-answer period.

Dr. Pillay shares the process,

“Désirée Brisebois has played an incremental role in all of this (live streaming). She joined us initially with the presentation to the town council. It steamed from there and it was thought to be something good to have an informational session. Besides what we are saying about safety within the community, we should answer questions about this new disease that is affecting the world. There are lots of questions and the information is rapidly changing, so to constantly make people aware of the latest information was going to be important in terms of fighting this cause. It was Désirée's idea to continue with live streaming. She has been instrumental in making sure that we do it periodically and I'm sure there will be more of the live streaming in the days ahead.”

Dr. Pillay was the past president of the Saskatchewan Medical Association and has been a family physician for over 20 years. He has extensive experience in a leadership role. He shares,

“The leadership skills that I learned along the way and the ability to focus on problems and figure out ways in which we could intervene early has helped me a lot in understanding what we need to do. With our medical knowledge as well, that's helped us a lot in terms of understanding what we need to do for our community and that's paid off.  The numbers have been stable in certain parts of the province.  For the past 15 days of several weeks, we do not have any cases of COVID-19 in town as, yet we know of.”

Moving forward, the EMO team does not foresee many changes happening with the current situation and will likely continue to do what it can to keep everyone safe.

Dr. Pillay summarizes,

“It is important to be aware that even if measures are loosened up on a provincial level to stimulate the economy, we should still carry on with what we are doing because I think until the pandemic is over, by doing or practicing measures of the public health measures, it's going to help us in terms of saving lives and there could still be a spike in the numbers but I think if we continue as we are right now, we definitely will reduce the spread and prevent lives from being lost.”

In gratitude, Dr. Ramlakhan, Dr. Pillay, Dr.Camel and the rest of the medical team want to convey to the community, the businesses, and surrounding area their heart-felt appreciation saying,

“We feel very blessed to be living in this community where the team spirit and camaraderie has been unsurpassed.”  Ramlakhan adds, “I would like to thank every one of the citizens of Gravelbourg and surrounding communities for looking out for one another and keeping us all safe during these surreal times. We are so close to victory, but we still need to be vigilant with self-isolation, social distancing, and meticulous hand hygiene for just a few more weeks. Together we will make a profound difference.”

“I want people to know that we are so grateful that the town council has come together with the EMO and the community and every member of the community needs to be thanked.” Pillay continues, “Each business needs to be thanked, and our frontline workers, whether they are part of the chain that brings us the food or the garbage pick up in town or part of the delivery service, we want to thank everyone, the restaurants, the businesses, and staff, because, without the work of every person, I don't think that we would have done as well as we have for the past month or more.”

The small-town model demonstrated by Gravelbourg, with a population of just over 1,000 may have made implementing the pandemic preventative measures more easily than a larger urban center might; however, the safety principals seem to be solid and adaptable for any community, regardless of size.