Four Sask. players named to Canada world junior hockey championship team
Dec 14, 2024
Berkly Catton, Brayden Yager, Caden Price and Tanner Howe were all named.
Nearly every day this week, a new advisory has been released by the Saskatchewan Health Authority about possible COVID-19 exposures at businesses.
There were advisories issued for locations in Saskatoon, Watrous, Waskesiu, Wakaw, Pilot Butte, Meadow Lake and Moose Jaw and, on Thursday, five Regina businesses were named in another release.
Dr. Saqib Shahab, the province’s chief medical health officer, explained that when someone tests positive, public health does an assessment and asks what businesses the person might have visited in the two days before they had symptoms.
Shahab also said with more testing now, health officials are seeing more people with no or mild symptoms, and if a person doesn’t have symptoms, they may go out.
However, there is some good news for people who have visited the same businesses.
“From what we’ve seen over the last six months, the risk of transmission in those settings is extremely low, even if someone was infectious and was to go to a retail location,” Shahab said during a media conference Thursday.
“If you pass by someone in a grocery store who was infectious and didn’t know about it, generally we haven’t seen transmission in those settings. Transmission really happens in close face-to-face contact, less than two metres. That happens for the most part in our personal gatherings or in a workplace where we aren’t maintaining the physical distance.”
Shahab said the current public guidelines like staying two metres apart and washing your hands have served Saskatchewan residents well, and the advisories are just released as an added precaution.
“(They’re) just to ensure that if people were at a particular business, they can (monitor) themselves for a couple of weeks and if they have any concerns, they can seek testing,” said Shahab.
Shahab said authorities may have to review the advisories, as people could see advisory fatigue if there are too many.
Testing numbers in schools
The province announced Thursday it would start providing numbers of tests and cases among children up to the age of 19.
That data will be available on the government’s website starting Sept. 17 and will cover for the previous week.
The province will also look at providing testing data for people who work in schools, but said Thursday it was going to review how useful that data would be first.
The provincial government also reiterated its definition of an outbreak in school settings.
If two or more people test positive for COVID-19 and are linked to a school within a specified time period, an outbreak will be declared. All parents will then receive notification through the government’s website.
More details regarding thresholds for changes to in-classroom learning is available here.
If a student or staff member receives a positive COVID-19 test result, contact tracing will begin immediately.
A look at the numbers
The number of active COVID-19 cases reported in Saskatchewan remained at 59 after the provincial government announced there were six new cases and six more recoveries.
The new cases — one each in the far northeast, Saskatoon, central-west, central-east and Regina zones, with the location of another case pending — increased the total to date to 1,676.
The six recoveries increased that total so far to 1,593. To date, 24 residents of the province have died after testing positive for COVID-19.
One person is receiving inpatient care in a Saskatoon hospital.
Two more health-care workers have contracted the virus, increasing that number to date to 69.
There have been 428 cases in the south area (218 southwest, 197 south-central, 13 southeast), 356 from the far north (349 far northwest, seven far northeast), 278 from the Saskatoon area, 270 from the north zone (131 northwest, 73 north-central, 66 northeast), 205 in the central region (167 central-west, 38 central-east) and 138 in the Regina area. The location of one case is pending.
Of the total number of cases, 839 are community contacts, 498 don’t have any known exposures, 257 are travellers and 82 are being investigated.
The total comprises 542 cases in the 20-to-39 age range, 511 between the ages of 40 and 59, 285 from age 60 to 79, 280 involving people 19 and under, and 58 in the 80-and-over range.
The 1,120 tests done Wednesday increased that total to date in the province to 153,649.