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One day after Premier Scott Moe talked about Saskatchewan’s plan to battle the Omicron COVID-19 variant, two more cases were reported in the province.
There now have been seven cases of the variant detected in Saskatchewan.
The variant is considered the most transmissible seen so far.
“As we see what’s happening and how quickly this new variant is moving around the world and even in other provinces in Canada right now, we should assume it’s in our community and we should assume that every case is Omicron — and we should conduct ourselves accordingly,” Moe said during a media conference Thursday.
The Ministry of Health reported a total of 49 new cases and 49 recoveries on Friday, along with one death. A person in the 80-and-over age group from the central-east region is the 942nd Saskatchewan resident to die as a result of COVID.
As of Thursday, Saskatchewan had a case rate of 38 per 100,000 people over the past seven days, behind only Newfoundland and Labrador (six) and Prince Edward Island (23) among the provinces.
A look at the numbers
The new cases were reported in the Saskatoon (24), Regina (11), far northwest (three), central-east (three), northwest (two), northeast (two), southeast (two), north-central (one) and south-central (one) regions.
The total included 26 people who were considered fully vaccinated, 22 individuals who were unvaccinated and one person who was partially vaccinated.
The unvaccinated group included 11 kids aged five to 11.
The seven-day average of new cases fell to 52, or 4.3 per 100,000 people. That’s the lowest that number has been since Aug. 5, when it was 51, or 4.2 per 100,000.
Five Saskatchewan residents who tested positive outside the province were added to the Saskatchewan total, which now stands at 82,069. There have been 80,579 recoveries reported so far.
The active case count increased by four from Thursday’s update, to 548. The Saskatoon region (156) and Regina area (127) have the highest two active caseloads.
There were 107 COVID patients in Saskatchewan hospitals, an increase of one from Thursday’s report, but the number of intensive care admissions dropped by two to 33.
A total of 1,824 doses of COVID vaccines were administered in the province, comprising 988 first shots and 836 second shots.
To date, more than 1.78 million shots have been given in Saskatchewan, with 847,226 of them second shots.
As of Friday, 44,658 kids between the ages of five and 11 had received their first shot.