Ginoogaming First Nation hopes to be included in Phase 1 of COVID-19 vaccine rollout

Members of Ginoogaming First Nation are calling on the province to include the community in the first phase of its COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

The community declared a state of emergency in January after its sixth confirmed COVID-19 case in less than a week.

On Wednesday, there were five active cases of COVID-19 in Ginoogaming, said health director and councillor Sheri Taylor.

And while the community has put a number of restrictions in place to limit the spread of the virus, it's also hoping to receive the vaccine soon.

"We haven't received any date yet from [the province] as to when we would receive these vaccines," Taylor said. "So we're just preparing ahead of time just to be ready."

Taylor said six Canadian Rangers arrived in the community on Tuesday, and are helping deal with the outbreak in a number of ways, including distributing personal protective equipment, and other supplies.

But the rangers are also helping with vaccine preparation by helping organize and deliver information.

Meanwhile, testing is continuing, and Taylor said most members have been tested.

"We still continue to have our clinic open for testing for those that we may have missed," she said. "Some have even come back to us that wanted a re-test, because they were negative at one point, but just with a lot of the outbreaks happening, they wanted to have a re-test."

The community is still closed to everyone that isn't a member, or essential worker, Taylor said.

"We're going to keep it as-is for now," she said. "We're just hoping that we don't get any more positive cases come back, but we did do a lot of new tests this week, so I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that things will work out okay for us."