Saskatoon City Council discussed COVID-19 and what can be done to address the latest wave of new infections in Saskatoon Monday.

During a special meeting, council and City staff talked about leisure centres for the bulk of the time with council being briefed on the fact that a number of safety protocols remain in place at the City’s seven leisure centres.

After discussing with local health officials, Pamela Goulden-McLeod, the City’s Director of Emergency Management said shutting down recreational facilities at this time wouldn’t result in a significant impact in slowing the spread of the virus.

She adds the facilities such as the Shaw Centre and the Field House haven’t been a hub for transmission even when there are groups utilizing the facilities.

“With our leisure centres, even when there was intense contact tracing occurring by the Saskatchewan Health Authority, we were not aware of any transmission that occurred in our facilities by user groups, we definitely had positive cases that were present but because of all the protocols in place we’re not seeing the transmission then.”

Andrew Roberts, the City’s Director of Recreation and Community Development says bookings both outdoors and inside leisure centres have slowed down.

“Generally speaking, we’re not seeing gatherings per say in our leisure centres or bookings for gatherings. It’s generally the recreational use, individual use events. We are seeing a lot of events cancelled or postponed, so for an example the track and field event that was scheduled for the middle of the month is now cancelled and is looking for a future date.”

Goulden-McLeod noted that the peak of the Omicron wave will likely hit at the end of January or the first week of February before an expected sudden decline in new infections.

During the meeting council did agree to start providing face masks on transit busses once the City is able to do so without affecting PPE supplies for other operations and to have City staff promote when leisure centres are less busy through its communication channels.

This is so users who would like to exercise when there are less people around, would have an idea of when they could access leisure centres when a lower amount of people are likely to be around.

The idea of implementing a mask policy at one of the leisure centres during certain hours of the day for all users was brought up by Councillor Cynthia Block, although no motion was presented.

Andrews said implementing such a policy would create challenges due to feedback from other groups and users who are accessing a facility at a given time. Currently, face masks aren’t mandated for those actively exercising at the City’s leisure centres.

The special meeting was called by Mayor Charlie Clark after current COVID-19 statistics point to the city being in the red zone when it comes to the framework that was adopted by the City in the fall.

Council will be provided with two other COVID updates later this month including on the 31st when council meets for their regular meeting.