There are 308 new cases of COVID-19 to report in Saskatchewan on Saturday, bringing the provincial total to date to 4,820 cases.
Three of the cases are in the southeast. All three cases are from Southeast Zone 1, which is in the northwest corner of the region, and has been responsible for most of the recent cases.
Fifty-six cases are considered active. Ten of the active cases are from Southeast Zone 4, which includes Estevan. It’s the same number of active cases for Zone 4 as Friday.
Thirty-nine of the active cases are from Zone 1.
One person in the southeast region has recovered. The recovery is in Zone 3, to the west of Zone 4.
As for the rest of the province, there are 26 new cases in the far northwest, eight in the far north central, 16 in the far northeast, 23 in the northwest, 30 in each of the north central and northeast, 123 in the Saskatoon region, 20 in the Regina region, seven in each of the central west and central east, two in the southwest and three in the south central.
Ten new cases have pending residence information.
Of the 4,820 reported cases, 1,691, or about 35 per cent, are considered active.
Forty-three more people have recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 3,100, or about 64.3 per cent of those diagnosed.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority says the high number of reported cases Saturday is due in part to the snowstorm early in the week, which resulted in fewer people going for testing, and some delays in getting samples from remote locations to the provincial labs.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) laboratories process large batches of COVID-19 tests. These large batches may be reported throughout the day, immediately before, or after the cut off time that is used when issuing public reporting numbers.
“When multiple large batches are reported immediately after the public reporting cut off time, it makes the day to day testing volumes and case numbers appear variable.”
Saskatchewan chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab is reminding residents of Saskatchewan to get back to the basics.
“Today’s record high case numbers are a reminder that the spread of COVID-19 in Saskatchewan is higher now than it has even been throughout Saskatchewan including urban, rural, northern and First Nations areas and that we all need to redouble our efforts to protect ourselves and others,” Shahab said.
“Wear a mask, limit your number of personal contacts, limit your number of visitors from outside your household, don’t leave home if you are feeling sick, and make sure you’re always physically distancing and washing your hands often. We all need to do our part to limit the spread.”
Fifty-seven people are in hospital. Forty-one people are receiving inpatient care: one in the far northwest, one in the far northeast, four in the northwest, four in north central, four in the northeast, 22 in Saskatoon, one in Regina, one in the southwest and three in southeast zone.
Sixteen people are in intensive care: one in the northwest, three in north central, eight in Saskatoon, two in central east and two in Regina.
Since mid-March, there have been 619 cases from the south area (255 southwest, 259 south central, 105 southeast).
As for the rest of the province, 1,360 cases are from the Saskatoon area, 1,031 cases are from the north area (332 northwest, 486 north central, 213 northeast), 703 cases are from the Regina area, 614 cases are from the far north area (479 far northwest, 31 far north central, 104 far northeast), and 473 cases are from the central area (210 central west, 263 central east).
20 cases have pending residence information
Of the 4,820 cases in the province, 405 cases are travelers, 2,152 are community contacts (including mass gatherings), 1,043 have no known exposures and 1,220 are under investigation by local public health.
There have been 140 cases among healthcare workers; however, the source of the infections may not be related to healthcare in all instances.
A total of 1,002 cases involve people 19 years of age and under, 1,763 cases are in the 20-39 age range; 1,343 are in the 40-59 age range; 591 are in the 60-79 age range and 121 are in the 80-plus range.
Fifty-one per cent of the cases are females and 49 per cent are males.
Twenty-nine deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported.
To date, 294,737 COVID-19 tests have been processed Saskatchewan. As of November 12, 2020 when other provincial and national numbers were available, Saskatchewan’s per capita rate was 193,920 people tested per million population. The national rate was 272,114 people tested per million population.
A total of 3,665 COVID-19 tests were processed in Saskatchewan on Friday, the highest test count in the 24-hour reporting period to date.
