Key takeaways:
- On Saturday, the province announced that more than one out of every four people who received a PCR test for the COVID-19 virus tested positive.
- Saskatchewan’s active case rate is around 444 per 100,000, compared to the national average of 985, according to the Canadian government.
On Saturday, the province reported that more than one in every four people who received a PCR test tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. It’s the 3rd day in a row that the test positivity rate has surpassed 25%.
On Saturday, 3,510 tests were reported, with 937 new cases, for a test positivity rate of 26.7 percent.
The province has stated that hospitalizations will be monitored as a COVID-19 indicator in Saskatchewan. The number of people in hospitals increased by nine on Saturday, to 114.
Also read: Sasks top doctor warns against unnecessary contact in the wake of the Omicron outbreak
There were 101 people in inpatient care and another 13 in intensive care. According to the provincial update, there were 58 hospitalizations due to COVID-19-related illnesses, 36 asymptomatic infections, and seven cases still being investigated.
The province has now posted more than 900 new cases daily for the third day in a row. According to the province’s COVID-19 dashboard, the highest number of daily new cases was 602 before 2022. Since the pandemic began, the province has cleared 90,000 cases in total.
While COVID-19 data always has missed a portion of the case count, case counts have been skewed more recently by the province’s recent guidance.
Residents in Saskatchewan were advised not to seek PCR testing if they tested positive on a rapid antigen test but were asymptomatic last week, resulting in a drop in case numbers.
Despite this, active cases have continued to break records, with the active case count increasing by over 6,000 cases in less than two weeks.
According to the provincial COVID-19 dashboard, there were less than 800 active cases on Dec. 23, but there were 6,897 active cases on Jan. 8.
The following health regions have reported new cases:
19. in the far northwest
10. in the far northeast
34 in the northwest.
Central North: 26.
39 in the northeast.
Saskatoon has a population of 224 people.
West Central: 19.
68 in the central east.
225, Regina.
29. Southwest.
46 in the south-central.
80 in the southeast.
A total of 118 new cases are awaiting information on where they will be living.
On Saturday, no new deaths were reported in Saskatchewan.
During a press conference on Thursday, Marlo Pritchard, President of the Public Safety Agency, said some elements of the COVID-19 dashboard, such as the variants of complaint and death tables, would not be updated.
On Saturday, the province reported 3,034 new vaccine doses, bringing the total to 1,813,493.
About a 3rd of the new doses (1,098) were first doses, with the rest being second doses.
Saskatchewan has one of the lowest active case rates in Canada, with the caveat that some cases aren’t counted due to the government’s recommendation against PCR tests for some residents.
As per the Canadian government, Saskatchewan’s active case rate is around 444 per 100,000, compared to the national average of 985.
