Here are some highlights from the latest COVID-19 update on Tuesday afternoon from Premier Scott Moe and Dr. Saqib Shahab, chief medical health officer for the province of Saskatchewan.
The big story from that news conference is that the current public health order, which was set to expire Feb. 19, has been extended an additional month to March 19.
There had been considerable speculation on Tuesday that the province might amend the health order to allow larger groupings of families, but that number remained unchanged.
“Our new case numbers have been trending in the right direction”, said Premier Moe at the news conference.
“There is reason for optimism but it’s not reason for us to let our guard down. What we are doing in Saskatchewan is working and continues to work, but we need to keep doing it to ensure this trend continues for the foreseeable future.”
That was why the public health order was being extended for four additional weeks, he said.
The other news is that the Ministry of Health has added an additional 11,500 health care workers into Phase One priority sequencing for the vaccine rollout. According to the province’s news release Tuesday, those included are as follows:
Individuals directly involved in delivering COVID-19 immunizations in phase two, including physicians (up to 2,600), pharmacists (up to 1,200) and other health care providers involved in delivering COVID-19 immunizations;
Anesthesists and operating rooms staff;
All other critical care areas;
Hemodialysis;
Vaccination teams;
Radiology techs;
ECG/echo;
Phlebotomy/lab workers handling COVID-19 specimens; and
Home care providers.
Regarding the vaccine rollout, Premier Moe reiterated the plan is still to vaccinate by age.
Moe also noted that other countries including the UK and Israel were seeing positive impacts from their mass vaccinations, including reductions in hospitalizations. “The vaccines are working, we just need more of them and we need more of them very quickly.”
Regarding the rollout, Moe said the province was ready to go with plans to set up 226 immunization clinics to be run by SHA. That does not include other vaccine clinics set up at pharmacies, physicians offices and other settings.
In the next couple of weeks, Moe said, the province expects to receive 28,000 more doses from Pfizer and 4,500 from Moderna.
These will be distributed to a number of locations and will mostly deliver second doses. Premier Moe also confirmed that Swift Current and southwest Saskatchewan will start receiving doses in the coming days for the first time. The region had not received any vaccines to date and Moe said that was the result of the reduction in deliveries.
Moe added the federal government has assured them that deliveries will be ramped up and more are expected in March and April.
In his remarks, Dr. Shahab said the numbers were trending in the right direction. He noted this was the second week of numbers trending below 200 new cases a day.
But he reiterated the need to “stay the course”, citing factors such as the “rapid introduction of variants of concern,” and then to reassess on March 19.
