Now that she’s living in Kamloops full time, the Interior Health Authority’s Medical Health Officer for the city has had a first meeting with the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce.

While on the NL Morning News, Chamber President, Tyson Andrykew, said it was a ‘get to know each other’ meeting.

“We just wanted to introduce ourselves to Dr. Fenton. She’s new to town so consider it being good neighbours in a way so we had a great chat over Zoom with her and a few members of our board,” he said.

“Largely we just wanted to introduce ourselves, kind of let her know what we’ve been doing on our end and then kind of just pick her brain to get an idea what authority she has, what her role is, what she’s seeing so far.”

Andrykew was asked about the importance of the relationship between the business community and the Health Officer and if it was heightened because of the pandemic.

“Absolutely and Dr. Fenton has been really willing to kind of be our liaison if we have any questions, any issues we are seeing with our community, our business community that we need to kind of run up the chain or get some clarification on or find a contact for some assistance,” he said.

Andrykew remains optimistic the the two parties will be able to work together in the future, noting it is a relationship they plan on continuing with long after the pandemic is over.

“She totally was willing to have us pass things by her, any sort of ideas that we have, any sort of policies that we’re going to be asking for or asking for recommendations on, she’s more than willing to give us a glance at it and let us know her thoughts,” Andrykew said, noting Dr. Fenton had some praise for the Chamber as well.

“She knew a lot of what we’re doing and she was very complimentary of not only the Chamber but of our business community.”

He said other health officers may even be a little jealous. “Sounds like she’s the envy of her colleagues as the Kamloops area has seen relatively low transmission, not a lot of community outbreaks and attributed a lot of that to responsible business practices in the pandemic. So, it was a really good chat.”