Saskatchewan has added nine deaths to its provincial COVID Dashboard after an error in the data base was discovered.

A red flag arose after there had been no COVID fatalities reported in our province for the past 15 days.

Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab provided this explanation.

“Cause no deaths were being reported, is there some issue with the data filters and that’s exactly what was found. To the best of my knowledge the government had not been aware that these deaths were not coming up through the system because of the data system issue.”

Five of the nine deaths were people over the age of 80, two were between the ages of 70 and 79 and two between the ages of 60 and 69. Six of the additional deaths are from the south-central and southeast zones.

To date 969 people have died due to COVID-19.

There are currently 192 inpatient admissions for COVID-19 in the province along with 23 in intensive care.

An internal audit was conducted of the COVID-19 reporting systems after it came to light that a notable length of time had passed without a novel coronavirus-related death being reported. The cause of the issue was found to be created by a programming parameter of December, 31st, 2021.

The error was found on a program called Panorama that the government uses for COVID-19 data collection.

No exact dates were given for when the nine deaths took place, although Shahab noted that they occurred between January 1st and January 21st.