An updated presentation provided for a Physicians’ Town Hall held on Thursday evening had new projection numbers from public health officials. Which, they say, in the interest of transparency, has been released to the public.
Those numbers indicate as of November 23rd the number of active cases of COVID-19 are up nearly 400% in the last 30 days. The number of those hospitalized is up 400% in the last 30 days. The percentage of ICU capacity being used for COVID-19 patients is 27% and growing.
The forecast suggests that COVID acute care demand alone could be half of all available bed for four to six months. As well the forecast indicates COVID ICU demand could be five times the current total ICU capacity for four to six months.
Some of the key strategies to deal with ever increasing COVID-19 cases includes ramping up to sustainably provide more than 4,000 tests/day by late December through Saskatchewan Health Authority delivered, high volume testing in Regina and Saskatoon.
As well, public health officials suggest GeneXpertrapid testing in 19 locations in Saskatchewan, point of care rapid testing, and third party testing. There is also the outline for broad range delivery of testing which includes more than 50 testing sites around Saskatchewan and mobile testing teams.
This also means more staff to do tests. The province says 76 positions are in various stages of recruitment and training, 73.2 positions are posted, 57.6 are hired, 27 are in training and 11.6 are fully trained
Public Health outlined plans for testing, capacity expectations of ICU and hospitalizations, and also expressed concern about outbreaks in long term care. Public Health officials say that outbreaks in senior care facilities are increasing with currently 22 outbreaks in Saskatchewan right now while noting that Manitoba announced eight new deaths which were all in seniors care homes.
Officials say, that based on average growth of the number of cases in the previous two weeks, a doubling of cases to more than 10,000 can be expected in the first week of December if no further measures are implemented.
