Nightclubs continue to be the primary link to new COVID-19 cases in Saskatoon. Saskatchewan’s largest city had 20 of Tuesday’s 44 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the update from the Ministry of Health. With 14 recoveries, the province’s active case count of COVID-19 went up over 400 to 427. Of those, 18 infections are being cared for in hospital…two in I-C-U and 16 inpatient treatments. Eight other zones accounted for the other 24 new cases of the virus, notably seven in the North East and five in the North Central zones.

Tuesday’s update had four cases being re-assigned…two of them being taken off the provincial count as the infected individuals were from out-of-province. A pending case was assigned to the Far North East zone while a positive case from out-of-province was assigned to the North West zone.

In total, Saskatchewan has had 2,439 reported cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic was declared in mid-March with 1,987 people having recovered.

Of the 2,439 cases in the province to date:

• 327 cases are travellers;
• 1,182 are community contacts (including mass gatherings);
• 653 have no known exposures; and
• 277 are under investigation by local public health.

Overall in Saskatchewan to date:

• 82 cases are healthcare workers; however, the source of the infections may not be related to healthcare in all instances.
• 446 cases involve people 19 years of age and under, while the remainder are adults.
• 842 cases are in the 20-39 age range; 718 are in the 40-59 age range; 357 are in the 60-79 age range; and 76 are in the 80-plus range.
• 51 per cent of the cases are females and 49 per cent are males.
• 25 deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported to date.
• There are:
  • 525 cases are from the Saskatoon area
  • 472 cases are from the south area (227 south west, 210 south central, 35 south east)
  • 421 cases are from the north area (153 north west, 177 north central, 91 north east)
  • 414 cases are from the far north area (371 far north west, 0 far north central, 43 far north east)
  • 338 cases are from the central area (193 central west, 145 central east)
  • 269 cases are from the Regina area

To date, 235,530 COVID-19 tests have been performed in Saskatchewan. As of October 18, 2020 when other provincial and national numbers are available from PHAC, Saskatchewan’s per capita rate was 161,069 people tested per million population. The national rate was 232,728 people tested per million population.

On Monday, 2,513 COVID-19 tests were performed in Saskatchewan.