VANCOUVER -- The Fraser Health region continues to be a COVID-19 hotspot in B.C., but a local medical student is trying to change that by changing the messaging.
Earlier this year, Sukhmeet Singh Sachal started noticing that some people in his community were not getting the health-and-safety message around the pandemic. When people would gather to worship, he said many of the older members were not wearing masks, and weren’t practicing physical distancing.
“Most of the population, the Punjabi population, the south Asian population, they don’t speak French. And most of the elderly people don’t even know English,” Sachal, who goes to the University of British Columbia, said, explaining that most messaging about the pandemic is often in one of those two languages.
In August, Sachal received a grant from the Clinton Foundation’s COVID-19 Student Action Fund. The money helped pay for things like signs in different languages and masks that could be tied around turbans.
“I was one of two Canadians out of 38 selected from around the world to get this grant,” he said. “It was really to make a difference in your community, what can you do in a culturally specific way to impact your community.”
Every Saturday, a team of young volunteers are on hand at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, to remind worshippers to be safe.
And it appears to be working. Volunteer coordinator, Tableen Ramgarhia, is just 21 years old. She says in the weeks since volunteers have been there they’ve seen “seen more and more people with masks.”
According to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, there have been 17,149 cases of COVID-19 reported in British Columbia since the pandemic started. In the Fraser Health region alone, there have been 10,109.
Bhupinder Biln with the Gurdwara committee says that fact is concerning.
“We are a large community in Surrey, whether it’s our community or any community, it's the health and safety of anyone.”
Sachal also has plans to expand the program throughout Surrey, and also into Alberta and Toronto.
