Saskatchewan stats As of Wednesday, there were 410 patients at the hospital

Key Takeaways:

• According to data from Saskatchewan’s 2nd weekly report, there are 410 people in hospitals with the disease, which is a new high.
• In the week of February 6 to February 12, 2,522 new COVID-19 cases were reported based on the results of 12,079 PCR tests.

COVID-19 data from Saskatchewan’s second weekly report reveals a total of 410 individuals in hospital with the condition, which is a new high.

The Saskatchewan government ceased releasing daily updates to the public earlier this month and delivered weekly reports on Thursdays.

As of February 9, there were 384 patients in hospitals with COVID-19, which matched a prior record from February 3.

The majority of the data in the most recent summary released by the government covers February 6 to 12.

The number of hospitalizations, which was accurate as Wednesday at noon, is an outlier.

Also read: Employees who were part of required COVID testing programme are mistakenly terminated

There were 410 persons in the hospital with COVID-19 at the time. Among them:

• For COVID-19, 181 people were admitted.
• 221 people have been classified as “incidental” instances, indicating they were not hospitalized for COVID-19 but later tested positive.
• Eight are still up in the air.
• As of Wednesday, 33 patients with COVID-19 were in critical care, up to seven from the previous report.

From February 6 to 12, the province recorded 42 fatalities. The number of COVID-19-related fatalities in the last five days has yet to be published.

Based on the findings of 12,079 PCR testing, 2,522 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the week of February 6 to February 12. Due to insufficient PCR testing and the omission of findings from quick antigen tests, that number is likely an undercount of the actual number of new cases in the province.

COVID-19 vaccination doses totaled 18,563 for the week of February 6-12, including 2,852 pediatric doses and 11,051 booster doses.

Risk communication in a new light

According to the interim senior medical health officer for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the transition to weekly reporting is “a bit premature.” Still, it was unavoidable due to the highly infectious Omicron strain of the virus that causes COVID-19.

“The reality is that because of the changes in the way this specific variant transmits and the testing that we’ve been willing to do, daily reporting of confirmed cases no longer has the same meaning,” said Dr. Cory Neudorf, a professor of community health as well as epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan.

On Thursday, he told CBC News that “it’s almost more detrimental to offer daily updates of incidents today.”

He believes that a daily evaluation of hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and fatalities is required.

However, this should occur within the healthcare system to determine how strained it is and guide judgments about what services healthcare personnel can and cannot provide.

This type of information is available internally, according to Neudorf.

According to him, local medical health authorities are presently investigating ways to effectively convey the COVID-19 danger to the general population.

“We’ve instilled in everyone the habit of checking these case numbers and other indicators regularly. And we need to make a change right now, “Neudorf stated.

“This wave will pass, and we’ll probably see more COVID outbreaks in the future, but there will be other issues, such as respiratory diseases. And, moving ahead, we should have a consistent approach to how we communicate with the public.”

According to Neudorf, other indications, such as absenteeism in schools and workplaces, wastewater monitoring, and sentinel surveillance, are used by medical health officers.

The latter entails public health collaborating with individual medical practices or emergency rooms to screen and test respiratory diseases.

“Risk thresholds” will be shared by public health to notify individuals about the degree of circulation in the community as well as how many precautions they should take, according to Neudorf.

He adds that this new style of risk communication will be available in the next days and weeks.

Source: CBC News