Health officials reported 113 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, along with 17 recoveries and no new deaths.

Thursday’s spike is largely due to the previously reported outbreak in Hatchet Lake, a First Nations community located in the Far North East Zone, which saw 58 new cases reported.

Health officials say the community started using a rapid testing machine provided by the federal government to speed up the case identification process. However, positive cases need to be manually entered into the provincial system.

The province says data entry into the provincial system has been delayed while staff work on the immediate outbreak response. Additional staff members have been brought in to help keep the provincial system up to date.

The SHA has reached out to the Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority to help detect new cases. Voluntary mass testing is underway, and vaccinations are being offered door-to-door.

The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) is also monitoring the community, and working with the federal government to secure more resources.

North Central reported just two new cases on Thursday, both of which were in Prince Albert, and no new recoveries. The SHA also assigned one case to North Central that was previously announced without residency information. There are now 32 active cases in the region.

Prince Albert has 25 of those active cases, while North Central Zone 1 has the remaining seven.

The North East reported no new cases or recoveries. There continues to be five active cases in the area.

The Far North West reported two new cases, and were also assigned one previously announced case. They have 50 active cases in the region. Far North Central reported three new cases, bringing their active case total to six.

There are 62 people in hospital with COVID-19, 11 of which are receiving intensive care. Three of those ICU patients are in North Central.

Another 13,314 new vaccine doses were reported on Thursday, 1,779 of which were first doses.  Saskatchewan now has 525,000 fully vaccinated residents, 35,191 of which are in North Central.