The Government of Saskatchewan reported just one new case of COVID-19 on Saturday in the Saskatoon region, breaking a recent trend of cases reported in the north or far north. The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) has also announced that the presumptive positive case in Lac La Ronge announced Thursday has been found to be negative.
The SHA declared on Saturday morning that the case was officially confirmed as negative.
In a release, they explained that presumptive results are used as the first line of defence to ensure the authority warn contacts and close contacts as soon as possible of possible exposure.
They explained that the Lac La Ronge Indian Band Health Services, Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority and Saskatchewan Health Authority public health officials took immediate steps with the presumptive result out of an abundance of caution to prevent potential further transmission.
With the new official result from the Roy Romanow Provincial Laboratory (RRPL), health officials indicate that no further action is required from customers who shopped or bought gas at the following locations:
Fire Creek Gas Station in Saskatoon – May 4
Co-Op Gas Bar, La Ronge – May 4 -11
Robertson Store, La Ronge – May 11
Keethanow Supermarket, La Ronge – May 5-8
Keethanow Gas Bar, La Ronge – May 4
Craving Restaurant La Ronge – May 1-9.
The SHA also announced that is ending its outbreak declaration at the long term care facility in the La Loche Health Centre made on April 17.
Dr. Rim Zayed, Medical Health Officer, has declared the outbreak over after the standard 28 day period has passed without a new positive case of COVID-19 in long term care.
Zayed cautions that community precautions remain in place and that exhaustive work continues as the Saskatchewan Health Authority and local community leaders work together to curtail the spread of COVID-19 in the area. This includes extensive door to door testing, mobile testing, and aggressive contact tracing.
These new numbers bring the province’s total number of reported cases to 591. With 433 recoveries and six resulting in deaths, 152 cases are considered active, which is a drop from the 176 active cases reported yesterday.
Twenty-five more recoveries have been reported in the past day.
Currently, there are eight people in hospital with illnesses related to COVID-19.Five are receiving inpatient care, one in the north, two in Saskatoon and two in Regina there are also three people in Saskatoon in intensive care. The province is emphasizing that these areas are where the patient is hospitalized, not the regions where they live.
Of the 590 cases in the province: 139 cases are related to travel, 320 are community contacts (including mass gatherings), 68 have no known exposures and 64 are under investigation by local public health.
There are currently 48 cases who are health care workers; however, the source of the infections is not related to their work environments in all instances, 218 of the cases are from the far north, 164 are from the Saskatoon area, 106 are from the north, 76 are from the Regina area, 15 are from the south and 12 are from the central region.
The age breakdown shows 83 cases involve people 19 years of age and under, 209 cases are in the 20-39 age range, 182 are in the 40-59 age range, 99 are in the 60-79 age range and 18 are in the 80-plus range.
The gender breakdown remains steady with 49 per cent of the cases eing females and 51 per cent being males. As of May 16, 40,097 COVID-19 tests have been performed in the province.
The province also announced that an investigation has concluded that the COVID-19 case admitted to Pasqua Hospital is a community-acquired case and does not constitute a hospital outbreak. The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) recently questioned the reasoning behind there being no outbreak announced as there was in a similar case at Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert.
Thus far, all testing of staff and contacts are negative in the case according to the province.
