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This article was published 02/03/2022 (465 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba asking the federal government to extend the deployment of Red Cross nurses is at odds with the province ditching COVID-19 public health restrictions and its plans to return to normal, critics say.

“When the Red Cross is being called in, there’s been an ongoing crisis,” NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara said during question period Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair announced a request for federal assistance from Manitoba was being met and the Red Cross was to “help fulfil short-term, urgent needs and address staffing shortages.”

His announcement came the same day the province cancelled the proof of vaccination against COVID-19 requirement for indoor dining and other non-essential services.

On Wednesday, the province announced those who test positive for COVID-19 will soon no longer be required to self isolate. Starting March 15, masks will no longer be required at most indoor public places.

However, now is not the time to loosen restrictions, critics charge.

“The reality is hospitals are still under strain,” Asagwara said.

A provincial spokesperson said the request of the federal government was for continued support from three Red Cross nurses already working at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. The trio will stay on until mid-March “to augment Manitoba’s COVID-19 response.”

While Manitoba’s COVID-19 case counts and hospitalization numbers continue to trend down, its ICU and acute care centres continue to be a few weeks behind those trends.

A front-line health-care professional at a Manitoba hospital told the Free Press they were alarmed the province continues to need federal nursing help, and worried another pandemic wave may be coming.

“The Red Cross announcement surprised me, as I thought that they would have been sent back prior to the loosening of restrictions,” the staff member, who agreed to comment on the condition of anonymity, said Wednesday.

The source said they’re once again being called back to work on their days off — a move that had seemed to peak in early January.

“Call backs have picked up again, including ones related to COVID,” the worker said.

“This has me concerned, with the new sub variant in the province combined with our low vaccination rate and, now, no restrictions. I hope this is just a blip. Short staffing makes it harder and harder to manage each surge.”

Health Minister Audrey Gordon told reporters Wednesday decisions to loosen public health restrictions are based on COVID-19 indicators that are being closely monitored.

Premier Heather Stefanson said the province is in a “transition phase” right now in its hospital system, as COVID-19 cases decrease and staff are redeployed to their home units.

The request for an extension of the Red Cross nurses at HSC was to ensure there is a “continuity of care,” the premier said.

Meantime, health-care advocates said lifting restrictions while hospitals are understaffed is “wrongheaded.”

“Masking and vaccine mandates are popular and effective strategies, and to be getting rid of strategies like that while you are still in the midst of calling for help from the federal government just strikes us as wrongheaded,” Manitoba Health Coalition director Thomas Linner said in an interview.

“There’s a number of things that are still concerning in our health-care system — one is that we know we have a chronic understaffing, whether or not there are Red Cross nurses being brought in to our health care,” Linner said.

“We also know that we are seeing patients still being transferred out of their own home health regions on a consistent basis… All of these are indicators that we shouldn’t be taking the foot off the gas when it comes to popular and effective public health measures.”

The restrictions are being lifted “for political reasons,” by a government is not even “pretending” to listen to public health officials, Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont told the Free Press.

“The PCs are doing one thing and saying another. Telling the federal government we need help for COVID outbreaks behind closed doors, while telling Manitobans the pandemic is basically over, when it is clearly not.”

— with files from Malak Abas

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca