COVID-19 cases in Saskatoon are beginning to flatten out, but work needs to be done to see those numbers come down.
That from Saskatoon Medical Health Officer Dr. Jasmine Hasselback who says last week the 7 day average of cases was 90 to 95, and that has dropped to around 70. Hasselback doesn’t want to say that we are effectively in a sate of flattening the curve, but we have definitely bent the rate of increase. She says we were seeing an exponential rate of growth for some time, and now we are seeing a little bit of that flattening.

Dr. Hasselback says at 72 new cases a day, we really need to see those numbers come down as that number is sitting against the backdrop of the high case loads from the beginning of the pandemic.
She adds the difference is the current increase in hospitalizations and more deaths than we’ve seen in the entire pandemic.

Hasselback says going into the holiday season, there certainly will need to be aggressive messaging that we’ve had success and cannot lose it.
She adds we cannot introduce any additional risk and any mixing of groups right now that haven’t been over the last week or two, would be absolutely detrimental.

Hasselback says some more positive news comes from COVID positivity rates, where last week it peaked above 10%. Currently it has dropped down and settled at around 8 to 9%.
There are currently 1294 active cases of COVID-19 in Saskatoon.