REGINA -- When the calendar turned over to November, Saskatchewan had seen 3,144 COVID-19 cases and 25 people had died from the virus.
In the 30 days since, Saskatchewan numbers have spiked with the province recording 5,421 new cases in November and 22 deaths, including 10 in the last five days.
Saskatchewan had set new record highs for active cases 26 times in November. There are 3,879 cases considered active as of Monday.
The province has topped its single day case record five times during the month, with all of the top-ten highest single day case increase happening over the last 30 days.
The situation isn’t improving, either. Three of the top five largest single day increases have come in the past four days, with 873 new cases since Friday.
Hospitalizations have also been growing.
There were a record 33 people in hospital with COVID-19 on Nov. 1. That number has been topped to 123 people now in hospital, including 23 people in intensive care.
The provincial government has introduced three rounds of COVID-19 measures over the past two weeks aimed at slowing the spread, including lowering the private gathering limit to five people and suspending sports activities.
After almost 1,000 cases over the weekend, Premier Scott Moe urged residents to follow those public health measures.
"For us to truly be effective in bending the curve, lowering the spread of COVID-19, we actually need to pay attention to what the health orders are and follow them in our daily routines," Moe said.
The Opposition New Democrats feel the Sask. Party government hasn’t done enough to curb the spread of the virus.
"Clearly they have failed to act quickly enough as we see the rise that we’re in today. They should have acted weeks ago," NDP Leader Ryan Meili said. "The measures that have been put in place were too little and too late."
Meili has continually called for a circuit breaker lockdown and believes that would have been the right step.
"If we had taken decisive action, that circuit breaker action, when it was called for by public health experts and we called for it in the Opposition, we’d be nearing the end of that period and we’d be seeing the cases dropping already," Meili said. "Instead, this government’s failure to act means that we’re facing potentially very serious lockdowns in the future."
This weekend’s spike in cases has also continued to add to the strain on contact tracing.
According to the province, there are more than 6,600 contacts requiring a follow-up right now.
The province says people should be limiting their close contacts to members of their immediate household. A close contact is anyone you’ve been within two metres of for 15 minutes or more.