Ongoing research from the University of Saskatchewan (USask) shows a drop in people who think the province is taking the right steps to control the COVID-19 pandemic.
Saskatchewan’s premier and the province’s chief medical health officer (CMHO) spoke at a briefing on Tuesday, noting the seven-day average for new cases has dropped by 20 per cent from its peak of 321 on Jan. 12, while adding that current restrictions will stay in place for at least three more weeks.
“This gradual decline means that our current public health orders that are in place and the restrictions that we have are working,” Premier Scott Moe said.
“We are seeing a steady decline in our case numbers. All indicators are moving in the right direction. It’s slow and it’s steady,” CMHO Dr. Saqib Shahab said.
Both coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths reached new record highs in the province this week.
USask social epidemiologist Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine said the province needs to send a clearer message about the severity of its situation.
“I was really surprised that there was no real reckoning of number of deaths that we have been adding due to COVID in this province. (Tuesday) alone, one of the highest, in fact, the highest death rate since the pandemic began in the province,” Muhajarine said on Wednesday via Zoom.
“It is grim and there was no reckoning about that. And also just to mention about no reckoning of the hospitalization, of our demand on our health medical care system … And also ICU (intensive care unit) bed use is at the limit as well. So, again, no reckoning of the continuing burden that is placed on the medical care system.
“I would say that we are not in great shape. We are certainly not out of danger. We are not certainly out of the woods by any stretch of imagination. In fact, I think that we are in danger zone.”
Muhajarine is the principal investigator of an ongoing study out of USask gauging how people are responding to the pandemic throughout the province.
Since the first day of the Re-Open Saskatchewan plan on May 4, 2020, his team has charted an overall decline in people who think the government is taking the right steps to control the pandemic, down from 78 per cent when reopening began to 43 per cent as of early January.
Of the more than 1,500 people surveyed recently, over 66 per cent don’t think current restrictions go far enough.
Muhajarine is confused as to why these figures aren’t triggering tougher restrictions.
“We don’t understand, many people don’t understand, why these measures are not taken. And in fact, in our research and social contours study in Saskatchewan, in the previous month we collected data, 67 per cent of those who responded to our survey said that the measures that are in place in Saskatchewan are not going far enough,” Muhajarine said.
“In public health, an important principle is the precautionary principle, which really means that if danger is lurking, death and disease and disability is lurking, we do whatever we can, absolute the utmost we can to prevent death, disease and disability … And it seems to me that we are not following that precautionary principle when we know that we are not out of danger yet.
“We are the only province who are not doing everything we can to reverse and to accelerate the reversal of the case numbers of COVID.”
Muhajarine pointed out that when Saskatchewan’s provincial neighbours were in similar situations late last year, they locked down and numbers improved.
“Alberta and Manitoba has done a lot to improve their cases, improve their situation with COVID-19 … Manitoba cracked down, very, very strong lockdown, no essential retail services and so on in late November and Alberta on Dec. 6. And soon after those measures were put into place both in Alberta and Manitoba, their case numbers start to go down,” he said.
“We do need to have a lockdown or stay-at-home orders in which we send a very clear message that this is what we need to do, stay home, don’t go out, unless for really essential services. And we need to really shut down in-person dining and bars and we have to enforce all of these measures.
“Enforcement has to be transparent and that enforcement has to be carried through to completion, not just on issuing a ticket but collecting the fees and this has to be communicated throughout the province.”
Survey results from the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU) are based on an online survey conducted from May 4, 2020, to Jan. 2, 2021. Muhajarine said because this a trend analysis, the consideration of margin of error is not really straightforward but at Phase 6 — 1,554 respondents — the 67 per cent estimate for people saying the COVID-19 restrictions don’t go far enough, the margin of error would be +/- 2.34 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.