Minion honoured for pandemic work
She’s one of the lab heroes of the pandemic, and she just won an award she said she shares with her team.
Dr. Jessica Minion won the Pandemic Innovator category at the YWCA of Regina’s Women of Distinction awards ceremony this year.
“It’s amazing, and humbling,” the medical microbiologist stated afterwards. “I’m very grateful to those in Provincial Programs who nominated me to be recognized. To be acknowledged by people who know what we’ve gone through in the past year is incredibly appreciated.”
The nomination, she said, means the most. “That people would hear the description for the award and think of me, and to be nominated beside such amazing women in our community, is a huge compliment.”
Lori Garchinski, Executive Director for Tertiary Care and Planning Chief for the Regina Integrated Health Incident Command Centre, and Laveena Tratch, Director of Primary Health Care for the Central Network in Regina and Vaccine Chief for the Regina Integrated Incident Command Centre, were also nominated in the Pandemic Innovator category.
Minion is a physician specializing in medical microbiology. She’s the SHA’s Provincial Clinical Lead for Public Health and Lab Medicine, and is responsible for the Roy Romanow Provincial Lab.
According to the YWCA: “Dr. Jessica Minion’s work in microbiology has been the silent driver behind quick and accurate COVID-19 testing in Saskatchewan. The important work of laboratory testing that often goes unseen has emerged as one of the three integral pillars in curbing the pandemic, and Jessica has been behind the scenes doing that important work for years.”
Minion was part of the team that developed and implemented testing for COVID-19 in Saskatchewan, and her expertise and research ensured that Saskatchewan has one of the top labs in Canada for detecting and testing for COVID-19. Minion was also instrumental in bringing advanced testing to identify variants of concern to Saskatchewan.
Usually, the practice of medical microbiology is varied, and she deals with many different things. “Every day is a new challenge,” she explained.
“But because of the pandemic, we’ve done nothing but COVID for a whole year. We had to drop everything and redirect all of our work… It’s been very unusual to be focused on a single pathogen, a single disease for this long.”
According to her nomination, “before the very first case of COVID arrived in Saskatchewan, Jessica was helping to formulate the pandemic organizational response, and provided calm and proficient leadership to her team in a time of uncertainty, where information was shifting daily. Jessica used her platform, research, and expertise to share the science across the province and educate the public on testing. Her drive, innovation, and tireless work in the lab has helped our province through some of the biggest challenges of the pandemic.”
For Jessica, this award is about her team.
“This award really is recognition for all the lab staff across the province who continue to deal with daily and weekly changes very stoically. They have been supremely flexible and accommodating,” she said.
Minion also expressed her thanks to the people of Saskatchewan.
“When we needed them to, they stayed home, cut their risks, and made a lot of sacrifices to limit the spread of the virus when things were getting bad. If they hadn’t, the system would not have been able to survive… We asked desperately for their help and most people came through.”
Minion also thanked the public for coming out and getting vaccinated.
“We have the best public health tool available to us now – the vaccine. This is now a vaccine-preventable disease. The vaccine is the tool we were waiting for.”