Saskatchewan’s Premier and its Chief Medical Health Officer are sending condolences to the family and friends of 2 people who died on Sunday, connected to the COVID-19 virus. Dr. Saqib Shahab says the 2 fatalities were from different areas of the province and they were both in their 70s. One was related to travel and the other to community transmission.

There are 20 new cases of the virus with 176 in total as of Monday. Five people are in hospital with one in the north, three in Saskatoon, and one ICU case is in Regina. At least eight cases are because of local transmission and the rest are travel related or cluster related due to exposure at mass gatherings. Fourteen people have recovered from the coronavirus and to date, 9,651 COVID-19 tests have been performed in Saskatchewan. Shahab is not aware of any cases in long term care homes in this province.

Premier Scott Moe says it was about 2 weeks ago when the first restrictions first began, so in the next week or so, we should hopefully see the results of that with a flattening of the curve. More personnel will be working on contact tracing. Currently there are 150 people trying to link the source of the transmission of each case and another 50 people are being added. Moe says that can be expanded if necessary.

Dr. Shahab says staying home and practising physical distancing is our job and he references a quote from Saskatchewan Health Authority Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Susan Shaw, who said Saskatchewan residents are the ’13th man’ in the fight against COVID-19.
If we did nothing, each of us could infect 3 people and in 10 weeks there would be 59-thousand people with the virus.

Of the 176 cases, 80 are in the 20 to 44 age group, 62 in the 45 to64 range, 29 in the 65 and over age range and 5 are 19 and under. 55 per cent are males and 45 per cent females.