Saskatchewan now has 40 deaths due to COVID-19 after three people were reported to have passed in Thursday’s update from the Ministry of Health. Two people in their 80s from the North West zone and a Saskatoon and area person in their 70s are the latest to have perished because of the novel coronavirus. Thursday’s report also reported 72 new cases of COVID-19 from the Saskatoon Correctional Centre…68 offenders and four staff. There are now 85 active cases of the virus among offenders and staff at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre.

Those 72 cases are among 125 new cases of COVID-19 from Saskatoon in Thursday’s update. In total, there were 299 new cases in the province, including 44 from Regina, and 34 from the North Central zone, which includes Prince Albert. Eight cases have pending residence information leaving 88 new cases spread among the other 10 zones. The seven-day average of new cases rose to 243. Meanwhile, a total of 178 people were reported as having recovered, meaning the active cases in Saskatchewan are up to 3,146…108 of which are in hospital, 18 in the I-C-U. The latter two numbers are down slightly from Wednesday’s update.

Of the cases announced Thursday, 72 are from the Saskatoon Correctional Centre-68 of these are offenders, and four are staff. To date, there are a total of 85 active cases among offenders and staff at Saskatoon Correctional Centre

Corrections officials are working with public health on measures to reduce the spread within the facility and the correctional system. This will include ongoing testing of offenders and staff at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre.

Additionally, all new admissions to provincial correctional centres will be tested for COVID-19 starting early next week. New admissions will continue to be quarantined for 14 days.

Corrections is also instituting mandatory continuous masking for offenders across all provincial correctional facilities. Employees at correctional centres have been continuously masking since the summer.

As of Thursday, there will be no new admissions to Saskatoon Correctional Centre. Remanded and sentenced offenders are being redirected to Regina and Prince Albert Correctional Centres.

Ten cases with pending residence information have been assigned to the following zones: Regina (3), North West (3), and North Central (4). Eighteen Saskatchewan residents tested out-of-province were added to the total counts in the following zones: North West (10), Far North West (2), North Central (1), Regina (1), Saskatoon (4).

One case with pending residence information and one case assigned to Saskatoon were deemed to be out-of-province residents and removed from the total counts.

Of the 7,362 cases in the province:

• 463 cases are travelers;
• 3,299 are community contacts (including mass gatherings);
• 1,496 have no known exposures; and
• 2,104 are under investigation by local public health.

Overall in Saskatchewan to date:

• 225 cases are healthcare workers; however, the source of the infections may not be related to healthcare in all instances.
• 1,552 cases involve people 19 years of age and under, while the remainder are adults.
• 2,603 cases are in the 20-39 age range; 1,962 are in the 40-59 age range; 980 are in the 60-79 age range; and 260 are in the 80-plus range. Confirmation of age is pending for five cases.
• 51 per cent of the cases are females and 49 per cent are males.
• 40 deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported to date.

Of 7,362 confirmed cases:

• 2,170 cases are from the Saskatoon area
• 1,550 cases are from the north area (542 north west, 729 north central, 279 north east)
• 1,212 cases are from the Regina area
• 978 cases are from the south area (356 south west, 383 south central, 239 south east)
• 848 cases are from the far north area (567 far north west, 79 far north central, 202 far north east)
• 576 cases are from the central area (262 central west, 314 central east)
• 28 cases have pending residence information

To date, 330,364 COVID-19 tests have been processed in Saskatchewan. As of November 24, 2020 when other provincial and national numbers were available, Saskatchewan’s per capita rate was 212,857 people tested per million population. The national rate was 295,051 people tested per million population.

On Wednesday, 3,493 COVID-19 tests were processed in Saskatchewan.

Weekly Reporting of Testing Numbers and Cases for Youth

Monitoring the trends of COVID-19 cases in school-aged children, the weekly report of cases and testing numbers for children aged 0-19 with data by age categories and testing positivity rates has been posted for the two-week period November 10-24, 2020 at www.saskatchewan.ca/COVID19-Safe-Schools-Plan.