Number of confirmed COVID cases climbing in Saskatchewan

The number of lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases in Saskatchewan is on an upward trajectory.

In its latest Community Respiratory Illness Surveillance Program report, Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health said there were 390 cases detected in lab testing in the week that ended Saturday.

That number has climbed over the past four weeks. There were 229 cases found between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30, 270 cases detected in the week of Oct. 1-7, and 345 cases confirmed by lab testing in the week of Oct. 8-14.

The test positivity rate has risen from 12.3 per cent in the final week of September to 15.5 per cent in the week ending Saturday.

The ministry also reported that four people over the age of 60 died due to COVID over the past two weeks. Since the pandemic began in March of 2020, 2,015 Saskatchewan residents have died after contracting the virus.

According to the report, there were 10 lab-confirmed cases of influenza in the week ending Saturday; that number was three in the first week of October.

There was one case of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) detected in lab testing last week.

COVID-19

The CRISP report said most of the lab-confirmed cases in the week ending Saturday were in the 65-and-over age group (58.1 per cent), followed by the 20-to-64 age group (36 per cent).

There have been 23 COVID outbreaks in high-risk settings in Saskatchewan over the past two weeks, up from 14 in the previous two-week period.

Hospitalizations due to COVID rose from 180 between Sept. 24 and Oct. 7 to 217 for the latest two-week period. The number of ICU admissions due to the virus has risen from 16 to 17 over the past month.

The percentage of staffed inpatient hospital beds occupied by COVID patients doubled over the past month, going from 3.1 per cent in the last week of September to 6.4 per cent last week.

The ministry noted that among people aged five and up in the province, only 8.6 per cent have received their latest dose of a COVID vaccine in the past six months.

Influenza

The influenza test positivity rate rose to one per cent in the week ending Saturday, but that’s still below the inter-seasonal two per cent threshold.

Hospitalizations due to the flu stood at two last week, the same number as two weeks earlier. There weren’t any flu cases in ICUs in the province.

RSV and Other Respiratory Viruses

The positivity rate for RSV was just 0.1 per cent in the week ending Saturday, down from 0.9 per cent in the last week of September.

There was just one RSV-related hospitalization reported over the past two weeks.