Update from the Board meeting with Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Kami Kandola

Dear members,

On Wednesday, August 11th, the Board of Directors for NWT Tourism had a meeting with NWT Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Kami Kandola. Prior to the meeting, NWT Tourism submitted questions for Dr. Kandola to answer. Thank you everyone for submitting your questions in advance.

Please note that the questions submitted to the CPHO were those directly related to tourism and the resumption of leisure travel. Some of you sent in very specific questions about the science of COVID-19, and those will be submitted to the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer for review and response, but were not submitted as part of this meeting.

Key Outcomes
The meeting was very productive, and there is good news to report. The essence of what we learned is as follows:

• The next step in Emerging Wisely is to allow for leisure travel by non-residents within the NWT.
• In order to achieve this, the NWT needs to have 75% of residents aged 18 and over fully vaccinated, 66-75% of the Canadian population with full vaccination, and less than 1000 daily new cases in Canada on a 7-day moving average.
• The metric for fully vaccinated Canadian population has been reached, and we are on track to meet the vaccine coverage for the NWT – as of August 7th 72% of the NWT population 18 and older is fully vaccinated.
• The daily case count in Canada is rising with the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant. The daily case count has risen above the threshold of 1000 daily, which is the one of the three criteria in Emerging Wisely to remove travel restrictions and allow for leisure travel.
• Given this increasing risk, the NWT will not be able to meet the criteria set out in Emerging Wisely and will not move to full leisure travel until later this fall.
• However, the CPHO is updating the public health orders and will be amending them when the 75% threshold is reached, to allow for all fully vaccinated leisure travellers, both residents and non-residents, to come to the NWT.
• In order to reach this number, approximately 1,000 more second doses will need to be administered 
• It is anticipated that the NWT will reach this number sometime in the next 3 to 4 weeks

Once Public Health Orders are amended

• Only fully vaccinated travellers will be allowed into the NWT for leisure travel.
• All individuals wishing to visit the NWT will need to fill out a form, which can be done online. This form and process will be streamlined to improve turnaround times for fully vaccinated travellers. It is expected that the form will be processed, granting the fully vaccinated traveller authorization to visit the NWT without self isolating, within minutes but up to 24 hours of the form submission.
• A fully vaccinated traveller (visitors and residents) will no longer have to do the symptom checks (by phone and email) that currently exist - travellers will be required to self monitor and report if there any symptoms.
• Only vaccinations recognized by Health Canada will be valid for entry into the NWT (and Canada).
• Please note that all travellers with symptoms will need to isolate and get tested for COVID-19. It is important to know that Transport Canada regulations will not allow travellers with symptoms to board airplanes, even if they are fully vaccinated.

I would like to thank our colleagues at the COVID Secretariat for facilitating this meeting today, and Dr. Kandola and her team for taking the time to meet with us. We appreciate all that Dr. Kandola and the GNWT has done to keep the residents of the NWT safe, and we are looking forward to reaching the next benchmark in the Emerging Wisely plan so that we can again welcome visitors safely to the Spectacular NWT.

Thank you,

Donna Lee Demarcke
Chief Executive Officer
NWT Tourism
Executive@spectacularnwt.com