Active coronavirus cases continue to rise in Saskatchewan

For the fourth day in a row, active coronavirus cases in Saskatchewan grew, according to the provincial government on Monday.

There are currently 103 active cases in the province, health officials said. Active cases are total cases less recoveries and deaths.

“The number of active cases in Saskatchewan is still fairly low. It’s been going up again over the course of the past few days,” Premier Scott Moe said on Monday.

This is the largest number of active cases since Aug. 23, when there were 106.

“The social gatherings are things that we need to pay attention to … When we are out in more public spaces like a business place or a workplace or a medical clinic. We are around people that we may not know quite as well and we tend to follow the rules more closely for whatever reason, the physical distancing or wearing a mask when required,” Moe said.

“From what I’ve seen across the province, when we are with our friends or family at a social gathering, we may become a little complacent and many of us may, at times over the course of the last six months, have been guilty of just becoming a little bit complacent in some of these more personal gatherings with friends and family.

“We are probably, as I said, all guilty of that from time to time and that’s exactly the incidents that have led to some of our larger outbreaks that we have seen, incidents precisely like that. So we can’t let our guard down. We’re not finished. Even when we’re in private settings with people we know with family and with friends.”

The government is reminding people in Saskatchewan that the maximum for indoor and outdoor gatherings is 30 people, provided there is enough space to maintain a two-metre separation between non-household individuals.

“This is important as the weather cools down and we start to head back indoors for winter. In fact, based on our experience to date, these are the settings where we have to be particularly careful. If you’re serving food and drinks, for instance, one person should be preparing and serving the food and different people shouldn’t be touching the same utensils or food trays.”​

“If we aren’t careful and if just one person in that setting does have the virus, they can spread it to a very large number of people in that type of setting and by extension, to the people that they come in contact with throughout the week or two after so please be careful.

“It’s how we will continue to keep ourselves safe. It’s how we will continue to keep our family and friends safe, it’s how we will continue to keep our COVID-19 infection numbers very low in our communities, in our families, in our schools and everywhere across the province … throughout this fall and into the winter.”

Moe said, at this point in time, the provincial government is not looking at re-imposing any COVID-19 restrictions. The province is currently in Phase 4.2 of the Re-Open Saskatchewan plan.

Health officials said there were eight new cases in the daily update on Monday, with the overall total for the province growing to 1,731 since the first case was reported in March. They noted three cases from last week were removed after one was deemed a false positive and the others were determined to be out-of-province cases.

According to a press release, most of the new cases are located in the Saskatoon zone with six while the others are in the south-west and south-central.

Government officials said investigations completed thus far have found that 34 of the current active cases are from “communal living settings.”

All current hospitalizations in the province are in Saskatoon — the three patients are receiving inpatient care.

One more people have recovered, bringing total recoveries to 1,604.

There have been 24 COVID-19-related deaths in Saskatchewan.

According to a press release, 1,819 COVID-19 tests were performed on Sept. 13 in Saskatchewan. To date, 160,275 tests have been carried out in the province.

4:33 Sask Polytech adjusting for COVID-19 this school year

Questions about COVID-19? Here are some things you need to know:

Symptoms can include fever, cough and difficulty breathing — very similar to a cold or flu. Some people can develop a more severe illness. People most at risk of this include older adults and people with severe chronic medical conditions like heart, lung or kidney disease. If you develop symptoms, contact public health authorities.

To prevent the virus from spreading, experts recommend frequent handwashing and coughing into your sleeve. They also recommend minimizing contact with others, staying home as much as possible and maintaining a distance of two metres from other people if you go out. In situations where you can’t keep a safe distance from others, public health officials recommend the use of a non-medical face mask or covering to prevent spreading the respiratory droplets that can carry the virus. In some provinces and municipalities across the country, masks or face coverings are now mandatory in indoor public spaces.

For full COVID-19 coverage from Global News, click here.