Eighteen people who tested positive for COVID-19 died in the two-week reporting period from January 15th to 28th in Saskatchewan. Two were between 20 and 59 years old and 16 were 60 or older. Eighteen people died in the first two weeks of January as well. There were no deaths related to RSV or the flu.

The provincial government’s Community Respiratory Illness Surveillance Program, or CRISP report states that although there was an increase of COVID and RSV cases in the first week of the new year, that didn’t continue through the rest of the month, and influenza activity is also lower.

The majority of respiratory virus hospitalizations is COVID-19 followed by RSV. COVID-19 admissions have gone from 9 average weekly admissions in the first two months of the year to four on average in the last two weeks. More specifically, 137 people with COVID were admitted to the hospital in the last two reporting weeks with 8 admitted to an ICU. That’s compared to 215 admitted in the previous two weeks and 19 in an ICU.

RSV is also on the decline in hospitals with 102 people admitted as opposed to 126 at the beginning of January. Ten were admitted to an ICU, as compared to 15 in the last report. Fourteen people were admitted with the flu at the beginning of the year with 4 in an ICU, and in this report, there were two people admitted to hospital and none admitted to an ICU.

Test positivity decreased from 6.9 per cent for COVID in the first week to 4.4 per cent in the last week. RSV cases remained stable at 157 cases for both the first two weeks and the last two weeks of January and the virus is affecting mostly young children. Ninety-five cases, or 62 per cent of the positive cases in the last week were in children four and under.