Premier Scott Moe and chief medical health office Dr. Saqib Shahab announced during their daily COVID-19 briefing the province has passed 200 cases.
As of Thursday, Saskatchewan now has 206 cases, up 13 since Wednesday.
Moe said during the press conference, Saskatchewan has now performed 11,395 tests, second only to Alberta on a per capita basis. He added the Roy Romanow Provincial Laboratory has done 867 tests in the last 24 hours, the highest number of tests processed to date.
“This is good news. As we work to ramp up our testing and our contact tracing efforts, low numbers of new cases alongside high numbers of tests means that our efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19 are working,” said Moe.
“It serves as an encouragement for each of us in this province to remain diligent in our individual efforts,” he added,
Moe also said he agreed with Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s announcement to bring the public the same information he receives in terms of in-depth statistics surrounding cases.
“The more information that we are able to provide to the people of Saskatchewan, the better informed we will be as our province works to reduce the spread,” said Moe.
Moe said he has asked the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) to provide a briefing early next week to be sent out to the public.
“This briefing will include models and will include projections of the spread of COVID-19 in Saskatchewan, and an update on the steps our health system is taking to expand our capacity for surges due to COVID-19,” said Moe.
Dr. Susan Shaw, chief medical health officer for the SHA, said they have had very intense focus efforts on understanding what surge capacity is required.
“We’ve been talking a lot about what models that our planning tools could tell us about how much capacity we may need to prepare for, and again, a worst-case scenario when flattening the curve isn’t as successful as we are all trying and aiming for it to be,” said Shaw.
“Just as a pandemic has phases, ethical decisions have phases as well,” she added.
Of the 206 cases, four are currently hospitalized. Two people are receiving inpatient care in Saskatoon, while two people are current in intensive care.
Additionally, 96 cases are travel-related, 44 are community contacts, 10 have no known exposures and 56 are under investigation by local public health.
One hundred and three of the cases are from the Saskatoon area, 44 from the Regina area, 38 from the north, nine from the central region, nine from the south and three from the far north.
