REGINA -- Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 picture improved considerably throughout the month of May, that’s the message from Thursday’s physician town hall hosted by the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).
"Overall, Saskatchewan, we’re definitely going in the right direction, although we still have quite a bit of work to do," Dr. Johnmark Opondo, medical health officer with the SHA, said.
New and active cases are trending down and hospitalizations have stabilized.
COVID-19 hospitalizations have to declined to their lowest point since Nov. 28 with only 113 people in hospital with the virus throughout Saskatchewan.
"Collectively, we’ve performed very well as a system," John Ash, executive director of acute care in Regina, said. "Certainly, we got a bit of a test of that in March, April timeframe, where we saw the variant of concern impact the Regina area quite significantly."
At its peak, there were 51 people in Saskatchewan’s ICUs, with 35 of those in Regina. On Friday, Saskatchewan has 26 patients in ICU and just nine in Regina.
According to the SHA, the demand on intensive care units in the province has dropped into the green zone for the first time since the end of January, which means Saskatchewan’s health system is able to keep up with current demand.
The province was in the yellow zone, which meant the system was challenged, throughout much of May.
"We need to be aware that this is a provincial slide and that some tertiary sites, such as St. Paul’s in Saskatoon and Battlefords Union remain over capacity in surge, but good news that we’re back into the top end of the green," Dr. John Froh, deputy chief medical officer-pandemic, said.
Physicians said one area where Saskatchewan isn’t strong at the moment is testing.
Only Saskatoon, North Central 3 and Central East 2 have testing rates over 250 per 100,000 people, while the entire South West, Central West and North East zones sit in the red at under 121 tests per capita.
Dr. Opondo said rapid point of care testing could be contributing to the decline in demand for tests from the SHA.
"The tests that are run by the system, demand for testing has gone down and that’s something that we need to keep an eye on," he said.
Physicians cautioned that spikes seen in Alberta and Manitoba in recent weeks could happen in Saskatchewan if the province doesn’t stay on top of testing.
