Fully vaccinated visitors no longer required to self-isolate
Northwest Territories is revising its self-isolation requirements for non-resident essential service workers, residents and other travellers entering the locality.
Under the new rules, those who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer need to self-isolate upon entry to the NWT.
However, everyone is still required to submit a Self-isolation Plan for potential contact tracing purposes.
“Our self-isolation requirements have been one of the pillars of our COVID-19 pandemic response. We have always said that we would ease public health measures when it was safe to do so. With vaccination uptake strong in the NWT, and having reached our target national vaccination rates and new daily cases outlined in Emerging Wisely 2021, we are now able to ease these restrictions for residents and some visitors,” said Northwest Territories Premier Caroline Cochrane.
“I encourage everyone to make informed decisions about managing the risk of COVID-19.”
In December 2020, Health Canada authorized the emergency use of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (BNT162b2) from Pfizer and BioNTech in the country.
Recently, more than 350 doctors and medical workers in Indonesia were infected by COVID-19 even though they were already vaccinated, according to reports.
Meanwhile, people who are partially vaccinated are still required to self-isolate for a minimum of eight days with a day eight negative test. People who are unvaccinated are required to self-isolate for a minimum of 10 days with a day 10 negative test.
Non-essential travel
A day 1 test and a day 14 test are required for people travelling from outside of the NWT to a small community and for some essential workers. For mixed households who are travelling together, it is only the least vaccinated traveller(s) who will be required to get a test.
The Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Kami Kandola’s recommendation to travel only for essential reasons has also been rescinded.
“We have learned a lot about COVID-19 since the pandemic began and are using that knowledge to relax public health restrictions that we have all been struggling with. As vaccination rates rise in the NWT and across Canada, we’ll continue to see case counts drop and restrictions eased,” said Kandola. “Residents and communities must now take personal responsibility to evaluate their own risk and make informed decisions.”
