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As the Re-Open Saskatchewan plan began Monday, Saskatchewan recorded its highest single-day total of new COVID-19 cases.
Despite that, Premier Scott Moe said he’s still feeling confident.
The provincial government announced Monday there were 34 new cases. The previous single-day high of 30 new cases was reported March 28.
The 34 new cases, which include presumptive cases from Saturday that are now confirmed, hiked the number in the province in May to 78.
There have been 467 cases in Saskatchewan since the pandemic started.
“I am feeling quite confident on behalf of the vast majority of communities in this province as we take this step today that really has never been taken in this province before,” Moe said during a media conference Monday.
He said initially, the restrictions were put in place to flatten the curve so the health-care system could manage the surge it thought it could see from the virus. But Saskatchewan is flattening the curve and certainly is to a point where the health system can handle it.
On Monday, there were 11 people in hospital, including four in intensive care.
“Eradication is not possible and it’s not the goal. The goal is to minimize the spread of the virus in our communities. We have always said we will have isolated outbreaks in facilities, in communities. We have that now in the northwest, and we’re going to make every effort to slow the spread of that virus in those communities and to push our active cases down,” said Moe.
Moe said government officials are doing everything possible to limit the spread of the virus, once again calling the Re-Open Saskatchewan plan “slow and methodical” and pointing out there have been businesses open the last several weeks and the province has still been able to flatten the curve.
“We have the greatest faith that employers, employees and customers will continue to practise good physical distancing in their daily activities, whether they be at work or whether they be out shopping or doing whatever they may do throughout today,” Moe said.
When asked what the threshold for new positive cases would be to pause the Re-Open plan for the whole province, Dr. Saqib Shahab — the province’s chief medical health officer — explained that it’s about context.
He said if the rest of the province, apart from the north, started seeing 20 to 30 new cases a day it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if health officials were able to confidently identify how the people were exposed.
“But if we start seeing those numbers creep up throughout the province or in specific areas, we need to look at that very closely. What is the setting that is causing the exposure? It may be something we understand — being a close contact of a case — or it may be something we have not seen before. And so we need to understand that (and) mitigate that,” said Shahab.
He said if Saskatchewan starts to see large numbers without any identified exposure, that would be cause for concern.
Northern outbreaks
Shahab said he’s keeping an eye on the active infection rate for the province.
It had been as low as 0.73 in previous weeks, but is now up to 0.93. He said that’s mostly because of the outbreak in the La Loche area.
Moe said he’d been closely monitoring over the weekend the outbreaks in Lloydminster and Prince Albert, which he said seem to be managed well.
He said he also spent time talking to northern leaders about how to get the infection rate lower, and said we’ll be seeing a much more active role from the provincial government in those communities.
More resources are being sent to northern communities. Workers are going to contact trace and test, units are being provided in La Loche starting Monday to help people self-isolate, and more conservation officers are being sent north to help man checkpoints to monitor travel.
Definitive answers haven’t been given about exactly why the outbreak has been able to spread so far in the north while southern Saskatchewan hasn’t seen such incidents.
Some of the reasons offered as possibilities include language barriers when it came to warnings and explanations about physical distancing. Resources have been translated and Moe said leaders have been communicating more and more with their citizens over the past couple weeks.
Housing situations in the north have also been mentioned as a possible factor — that some people live with more people and so it’s harder to self-isolate,
Moe mentioned on Monday that for some in the north, travel to other communities is a necessity as some communities don’t have things like grocery stores.
Twenty-nine of the new cases are in the far north in La Loche and area, four are in the north and one is in the Saskatoon area.
Both Moe and Shahab talked about the need for everyone in the province to continue to do things like physically distancing, saying that if residents let their guard down, then the infection can take hold and run rampant.
The numbers
There now are 154 active cases in the province. That includes 97 in the far north, 35 in the north, 17 in Saskatoon and five in Regina. Neither the central region nor the southern area of the province have any active cases.
Outbreaks have been reported recently in La Loche, Beauval, Lloydminster and Prince Albert.
Two more recoveries were reported Monday, increasing the provincial total so far to 307. Six people have died to date.
The total number of cases comprises 162 from the Saskatoon area, 110 from the far north, 93 from the north, 76 from the Regina area, 15 from the south, and 11 from the central region.
Of the total, 182 are community contacts (mass gatherings included), 138 are travellers, 107 are under investigation by local public health, and 40 don’t have any known exposures.
There now have been 43 health-care workers infected.
The number of cases involving people 19 years of age and under is now 51, an increase of 11 from Sunday’s report.
In addition, there are 167 cases in the 20-to-39 age range, 152 between the ages of 40 and 59, 82 in the 60-to-79 age range, and 15 aged 80 and over.
There were 762 tests done in the province Sunday, increasing the total to date to 32,334.