Saskatoon city council opts not to bring back restrictions to city facilities

Saskatoon city councillors decided not to bring back any new restrictions at civic facilities during a special meeting to update the city’s COVID-19 situation late Monday afternoon.

The city created “a decision-making framework” last year to keep track of COVID-19 and limit its transmission in city-owned facilities. The risk criteria listed on the city’s website consists of four levels based on COVID’s spread in Saskatoon — minimal risk (green), caution (yellow), high risk (orange) and critical (red).

Saskatoon entered the critical category on Friday, which corresponds to the City shutting down leisure centres, closing city hall and enacting mandatory testing for all staff reporting to the workplace — but any measures would need to be approved by council.

Emergency management director Pamela Goulden-McLeod said no changes were currently necessary since there’s no evidence to suggest closing any facilities would limit Omicron’s spread.

“Closing our leisure centres would just not have any real impact on the case rates in Saskatoon right now, given how widespread it is,” Goulden-McLeod said.

“They are not a driver of transmission,” she added, noting her recent conversations Goulden-McLeod had with Saskatoon medical health officer Dr. Jasmine Hasselback.

City Manager Jeff Jorgenson said the administration has been closely monitoring COVID-19 cases in the city, but the “critical” status doesn’t mean that changes are necessary.

“In consultation with medical health officers and looking at all the facts, the administration isn’t recommending any changes to public-facing services,” Jorgenson said.

“With the onset of Omicron and all that it brings, our focus is very much on the internal actions we’re taking from a staffing perspective to do everything we can to ensure business continuity.”

According to Monday’s provincial update, Saskatoon has 2,279 active cases.

Jorgenson said the City, like other employers across the province, will continue to see employees missing more work and staying home to isolate as the Omicron variant moves through Saskatchewan.

“We are seeing increased numbers of staff who are positive for COVID-19. In our positive case responses, we are finding that these cases are occurring outside of the workplace,” Goulden-McLeod said, noting the driver of transmission remains gatherings.

The administration originally planned to have staff back in the workplace later this month, but that has been pushed back to April because of Omicron.

Jorgenson also expects service disruptions of some sort in the coming weeks, but protocols in place protecting essential services are holding so far.

Goulden-McLeod expects the Omicron wave to be more of a spike in Saskatoon as modelling data projects the virus will peak and then drop very quickly, potentially avoiding the prolonged plateau Delta provided.

The model expects Omicron cases to peak in Saskatoon at the end of January or the beginning of February and then rapidly decline as it has in other jurisdictions across the world.