Health Minister John Haggie provided a much clearer image around the logic behind taking a more cautious approach to re-opening the province on Thursday.

Haggie says it’s about the nature of the disease. It can take up to 14 days from exposure to the virus to show symptoms. If you then pass that onto somebody else, it can take them up to another 14 days.

The Minister says given the fact we have a very elderly population compared to other jurisdictions and some of the highest incidences of other chronic diseases, particularly diabetes (11 per cent of the province’s population are diabetic), 28 days is a reasonable period.

He says that’s to make sure, from a provincial point of view, that people are as good as they can be for this first increment. Whether it needs to be 28 days between alert levels afterwards isn’t yet known. Haggie says in 14 to 17 days they’ll have new information from the Public Health Agency of Canada and other sources.

If it still needs to be 28 days between Alert Levels three and two, Haggie says they’ll make that case. If it’s different, they’ll make that case too because there is no playbook for this pandemic.

He believes the reason everyone is happy that nothing is happening is because of the hard work that has been done.

Health Minister says Travel Ban is Responsible Public Health

When it comes to the travel ban, Haggie says our travel restrictions are nowhere near as harsh as Quebec’s, PEI’s or New Brunswick’s. He stated that every day for weeks, New Brunswick has turned away at least 35 people at their borders.

The Minister stood by the government’s decision, citing responsible public health.

Haggie says those other jurisdictions have had that success in that environment, but we don’t have that environment, so they take what they’ve got and act out of an abundance of caution.

Haggie argues that’s good and responsible public health.