Examining Saskatchewan’s COVID condition as it becomes hardest hit per capita in Canada

Per capita, Saskatchewan is the worst spot for COVID-19 in the entire country.

That’s based upon Health Canada’s epidemiology update, which was last updated Tuesday night. Saskatchewan had the highest active case rate of all provinces in Canada, with 319 per 100,000 population.

Coming behind Saskatchewan is Alberta with 302, then Quebec with 282.

To better understand the statistics, 650 CKOM spoke Wednesday to Kyle Anderson, a biomedical professor from the University of Saskatchewan.

“If we want to sort of think about speed and acceleration in terms of how fast something is going, we can think about our active case rate (because it) is our overall speed,” Anderson explained.

“The other thing we can look at is not just how many active cases there are, but how many new cases we’re accumulating each day. This other metric is called the ‘incidence.’ That’s again per capita (and) averaged over a week.

“If that’s our speed and acceleration right now, Saskatchewan has the highest speed in Canada.”

In terms of the incidence, Anderson said Saskatchewan is just slightly behind Quebec for top spot in that national ranking as well.

He gave the example of Ontario to compare how that province is dealing with resources.

“Even though Ontario might have eight times as many people as Saskatchewan, they probably also have eight times as many hospitals, doctors (and) nurses,” he said. “They actually have a much higher testing capacity than we do.

“You can’t just look at raw numbers because they’re going to be higher everything. You really need to look per capita … the number easily comparing, ‘Oh, Saskatchewan is a lot lower than Alberta or Quebec or Ontario.’ ”

Anderson said other provinces across Canada are taking COVID more seriously when looking at their handlings of the virus.

“The first wave, nobody knew what was happening. Some places were hit very early compared to others,” he said. “Things didn’t get here as quickly and it didn’t get as bad as that.

“But when it comes to the second wave, everyone has the same knowledge right now — how quickly things can get out of hand. So there’s really no excuse other than the leadership, the policies and the people that are following them.

“Right now, the fact that we are doing the worst in Canada — it’s that we’re doing the worst things — it really comes down to us. The buck stops here. It stops with you, it stops at everyone. (We) are the ones who are causing this pandemic to be more wildly spread than other provinces.”

Anderson gave the example of Manitoba, and how the province took extra measures as its COVID numbers began to spiral late in 2020. Now, Saskatchewan’s active caseload sits at 3,748, while 2,928 Manitobans are listed as active COVID cases.

Manitoba implemented a lockdown, which included a shutdown of its non-essential services.

“We could be in that same spot if we really committed to the guidelines we have in place,” Anderson said.

He added that some in Saskatchewan should “retrain” their brains back to our outlook on COVID during Saskatchewan’s first lockdown.

“Even if you are allowed to go eat at a restaurant, (you should think), ‘Is that something that I need to do? Or is that something that I want to do because I want that social outing?’ There is a hidden cost. There is a chance that I could spread it to someone else or someone else could spread to me, just by putting myself in that situation,” he said.

Anderson’s findings with the provincial COVID data also sound the alarm of what we could be looking at as we continue through January.

“Right now, we have yet to really feel the sort of damage that’s going to come to hospitalizations because those usually lag, about two to three weeks. So all of this sort of increased activity in case numbers we see right now, that’s going to start to put more restrictions on medical services,” he explained, before offering a more grim outlook.

“Deaths usually lag by about three weeks from initial case numbers. It’s quite likely we’re going to have 100 deaths total, or more, potentially for January. This is going to be a brutal month given the number of long-term care outbreaks that we’ve had and the numbers that are still continuing.”

As of Wednesday, 51 Saskatchewan residents had died due to COVID.

Anderson added most of the north-central region in Saskatchewan is seeing cases double that of Regina or Saskatoon.

And in the far north as a whole? Some areas are seeing caseloads that are six to 10 times worse than that of both Regina and Saskatoon, based on Anderson’s findings.

He added the province should be applying the right resources across the province, and keying on these hotspots.

“If anything’s going to get better, we need to improve the hotspots first,” he said.