High COVID transmission levels in Sask. could continue for months: epidemiologist
CBC
High levels of COVID-19 transmission in Saskatchewan could likely go on "for months," according to an epidemiologist and official with the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).
Saskatchewan reached a near-record 403 COVID hospitalizations as of Wednesday, the last available data in the province's weekly report released on Thursday. The record was 410 hospitalizations in mid-February.
Of those in hospital, 25 were in intensive care — an increase from 20 last week.
Thursday's update also showed 43.4 COVID-like illness patients were showing up per 1,000 emergency room visits.
"Without a change in people's behaviour so that we can get transmission rates down, that [level of transmission] is going to continue for months yet, which creates a very unsafe situation for people," said Dr. Cory Neudorf, an epidemiologist and the interim senior medical health officer for the SHA.
Saskatchewan was still at a high level of transmission when it became the first province to drop all COVID-19 mandates on Feb. 28, and hadn't come down from the peak of the fifth wave, Neudorf said.
Meanwhile, provinces that kept their COVID measures in place longer had their fifth wave come down more sharply, Neudorf pointed out, though the sixth wave is ramping up in those provinces, driven by the more transmissible BA.2 variant.
"The issue is if they reintroduce those restrictions, they can bring that wave down very, very quickly because they're starting at a lower rate," Neudorf said in an interview with CBC News.
"For us, even if we could get everybody to keep masking again, it's going to take longer to come down because we're starting at a high level."
Provinces such as Ontario and British Columbia which dropped restrictions after Saskatchewan have fewer COVID hospitalizations on a per capita basis.
Ontario, which is about 12 times the population of Saskatchewan, reported 1,392 people in hospital with COVID on Thursday, while B.C., about four times the population of Saskatchewan, reported 364.
Saskatchewan has more than four times as many COVID hospitalizations per capita as B.C. and nearly four times as many as Ontario, per the latest data from those provinces' respective dashboards.
Nazeem Muhajarine, a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan, said current COVID rates are "unsustainable" for the health-care system.
"This is not a pressure on the health-care system, hospitalizations, ED [emergency department] visits that we can continue to sustain without real loss of personnel, further degradation of morale, maybe quality of care," he told CBC News on Friday.
The new owner of Ontario steelmaker Stelco says his company "will not disappoint the people of Hamilton and Nanticoke," where the business's major facilities are based.
A Winnipegger is warning others about an intricate scam she says she almost fell for.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.
Registered nurses rallied in St. John's Wednesday as part of a week-long convention, again calling on the Newfoundland and Labrador government to create permanent solutions to staff shortages and workplace violence.