Chief medical health officer hints at further restrictions

Saskatchewan’s chief medical officer of health sent a strong signal that tighter COVID-19 restrictions are coming.

Speaking to Gormley on Thursday morning, Dr. Saqib Shahab said the measures put in place in December are becoming increasingly untenable given the high number of new cases each day.

“I think (they) make even the status quo hard to maintain. I think we are heading into more significant slowdown territory,” Shahab said.

In the province’s COVID update Wednesday, the seven-day average of daily new cases was at 316. Shahab said his “comfort zone” would be 120.

Current trends are putting strain on the health-care system, with Shahab saying the hospitalization rate and ICU admissions per capita are among the highest in the country.

“Our health-care providers have been working flat-out throughout December into January,” he said. “We are … seeing our highest acute care and hospitalization rates we’ve ever seen and it’s a testament to their ability to continue working.”

But Shahab believes residents can steer the province onto a more favourable path, that for a while, those measures did bring numbers down.

“Never underestimate our own ability to bring a case numbers down,” he said. “We may still be able to escape having to tighten things up, but things right now are looking very concerning.”

Shahab said his hope is that all long-term care residents will be vaccinated with two doses by February. People 70 and older would be vaccinated by March. People 50 and older would be offered a vaccine by the spring.

“So we’re hitting the age groups that have the highest rate of hospitalization and death so … we hope to see an impact on the numbers for hospitals and deaths by May,” he said.