Increasing number of unexplained COVID-19 transmissions in Saskatoon has local health authorities worried

Heading into the Thanksgiving long weekend, there is an increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Saskatoon that are unexplained, and many that are likely undetected.

That was the opinion Thursday of the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Dr. Jasmine Hasselback, who was joined by members of the city’s administration, including Emergency Management Operations director Pamela Goulden-McLeod.

While Hasselback says it’s also happening in other parts of the province, there is an uptick in the city and health officials are trying to get a handle on it as quickly as possible.

“We’re not waiting to see if this will get worse and worse and worse. We want to act as quickly as possible,” she said during a Zoom news conference.

She says authorities are seeing too many of their new cases coming from an expected or explained source. For example, someone who has contracted COVID-19 from a known close contact with it, where the contact has isolated, contracting the virus may have been expected, and the chain can be broken.

While many people are being diligent, some are not or others are getting the virus with no known explanation, and it’s concerning.

“We’re at a critical point right now because of those various components coming together,” Hasselback said. “It’s giving us an indication that I’m worried about the amount of COVID-19 activity that we’re seeing, but also that we’re seeing a proxy, that we have much more community than we appreciate and not knowing is quite concerning.

“We’re moving into that realm of there’s probably quite a bit of disease out there that is unquantified and not detected. So we want everyone to be in that state of awareness.”

If that’s what’s happening, Goulden-McLeod was asked why masks haven’t been mandated by the city as they have been in other municipalities.

“We continue to put all the reasonable and evidence-based and valid interventions on the table, and then we look at our local context and what’s going to be the most important … It in itself as a policy is not the automatic solution to containment and control. It is one of many different interventions,” she said.

While Hasselback says the unexplained cases aren’t an “incredibly large” portion of new cases being seen, it is sufficient that it’s an indicator of where things are going.

Both the city and the health authority will be monitoring whether the cases are emerging in any particular demographics or cohorts at this time.

For now, the ask from the city is that people keep their contact “bubbles” small and that they are able to account for where they’ve been and with whom they’ve been in contact, along with practising mask-wearing, physical distancing and diligent hand washing.

Preston Park II Senior’s Resident Outbreak

Hasselback also confirmed an outbreak at one of the buildings in the Preston Park II Senior’s Retirement Residences in the Market Mall area.

She says she’s aware of several events that have recently occurred there, and contact tracing and investigations are underway.

At this point, she believes the outbreak is limited to two connected people in the building.

“The outbreak has been aggressively consuming our energies here in Saskatoon since the first signal that we did see. And there has been some phenomenal response from the site, as well as really impressive collaborations,” she said.

It’s not clear whether there are visitor restrictions at the facility at this time.