How Saskatchewan set a record for COVID-19 deaths in 2022

Nearly a year ago, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced the end of COVID-19 restrictions in the province. 

It marked a change in approach, as Saskatchewan stopped trying to contain the virus behind the global pandemic and moved to treat it the same way as any other communicable disease.

But the arrival of the Omicron variant changed the equation.

While it is considered mild in terms of symptoms compared to other strains, Omicron is more virulent, more able to evade immunity provided by vaccinations and, as a result, was able to spread quickly and infect more people, said Dr. Cory Neudorf, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan. 

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From there it was just simple math as the virus ran through the province's population. 

"The number of cases that we had in this province was so much higher than what we saw in the year before that even at a lower proportion, it has led to more hospitalizations, ICU stays and deaths," said Neudorf, who is also an interim senior medical health officer with the Saskatchewan Health Authority. 

At least 845 people with COVID-19 died in 2022 in Saskatchewan, an increase of 43 from the year before. 

That number may increase as the province's data is updated and refined. 

While the virulence of the Omicron variant is mostly what contributed to the high death toll in 2022, experts say the lifting of health measures at the end of February did the province no favours. 

"I don't think [keeping health measures] would have prevented them, but it may certainly have reduced transmission to the point that we wouldn't be seeing overall as many deaths and hospitalizations," said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. 

The decision to lift health measures was against the advice of many experts in the province. 

"As you'll see from looking at previous interviews, most of us — as far as experts in this area — felt that was premature," said Neudorf. 

The presence of COVID-19 persisted at a high level before slowly declining in the spring.