Latest COVID update Feb. 23: 4 deaths, 3 new cases of variants confirmed

The Saskatchewan government said Tuesday three new confirmed cases of COVID-19 variants had been detected in the province, as well as one presumptive case.

In its daily media release, the Ministry of Health said two residents of the Regina zone had been diagnosed with the United Kingdom variant.

The government said the two people were tested at the end of January. Contact tracing has determined there wasn’t any link to travel.

There also was a presumptive case of the U.K. variant involving a person from the Saskatoon area.

“The individual was transferred from out of province to Saskatoon for acute care,” the ministry said in its release. “Whole genome sequencing will need to be completed to confirm the results.”

As well, an individual from the north-central zone has been diagnosed with the South African variant after being tested at the end of January. No further details were provided about that case.

To date, five cases of the U.K. variant and one of the South African variant have been confirmed in Saskatchewan. The seventh case is presumptive.

“We were fully expecting to see variants of concern, both travel-related and non-travel-related,” Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer, said during a media conference.

“We had seen three variants of concern linked to travel and now we have seen a further three not linked to travel. This is not different from what other provinces have seen.”

Shahab said the practices that limit the spread of the original strain of COVID-19 — physical distancing, hand-washing, wearing masks and so forth — will work to limit the potential spread of the variants too.

“Doing all these things consistently (and) meticulously is the most important way to keep any COVID transmission rates low, including any variants of concern that may become established in Canada and Saskatchewan,” Shahab said.

During the media conference, Premier Scott Moe was asked why the province doesn’t enact stronger public health measures now that more cases of variants are showing up.

“Existing public health orders are effective with the variants as they are effective with the original COVID-19 virus that we have,” Moe replied. “It was never if we were going to have variants arrive in Saskatchewan, it was when …

“In other areas around the world where you see these variants arrive, you do see the public health measures that are in place being looked at very closely. But they’re the exactly the same public health measures that prevent the spread of variants that will prevent the spread of the original COVID.”

Moe said the Roy Romanow Provincial Laboratory is going through a certification process required to identify the variants, as opposed to having to send samples to the national lab in Winnipeg for verification. The premier said that certification could be granted in early March.

“Having that capacity in house will help us increase the proportion that we can screen,” said Shahab, who noted six per cent of samples currently collected in Saskatchewan are screened for the variants at the Regina-based lab. “It’ll also shorten the time it takes to get the results from one to two weeks to a few days.”

A look at the numbers

The release also said there were 122 new cases and 244 recoveries to report, as well as four more deaths.

Three deaths were reported in the 80-and-over age group, comprising two individuals from the Regina zone and one from the Saskatoon area. The other fatality was a person in their 70s from the Regina region.

As of Tuesday, 376 residents of the province have died due to COVID-19.

The new cases reported Tuesday were in the Regina (37), Saskatoon (25), far northeast (16), far northwest (11), northwest (10), central-east (seven), far north-central (five), north-central (four), northeast (two) and southeast (one) zones.

The hometowns of four cases are being determined.

The seven-day average of new cases is 156, or 12.7 per 100,000 population.

The total number of cases to date in Saskatchewan is 27,923 cases. So far, there have been 26,017 recoveries reported.

There are 1,530 active cases being reported in the province.

Of the 174 people in Saskatchewan hospitals, 16 are in intensive care. That includes eight people in the Saskatoon area, six in the Regina region and one in each of the northwest and north-central zones.

The 1,872 tests done in the province Monday increased the total so far to 563,055.

Vaccination update

There were 549 doses administered Monday in Saskatchewan — 196 in the Saskatoon area, 170 in the Regina zone, 83 in the central-east region, 78 in the northwest and 11 in each of the far north-central and northeast regions.

The province’s total so far is 62,342.