COVID-19 in Sask.: 349 hospitalizations, nearing record high

Hospitalizations in the province rose by nine on Sunday, totalling 349, and drawing nearer to the highest number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Saskatchewan.

The current Omicron-driven fifth wave of the pandemic has shattered active and new daily case records in Saskatchewan, despite the government recommending asymptomatic people who may be positive for the virus forgo PCR testing. That excludes them from being included in the provincial case numbers.

Now, COVID-19 hospitalizations are inching closer to exceeding the pandemic high: 356 people were hospitalized with the virus on Oct. 6. At that time, there were 76 people in intensive care and the province hadn't begun sending residents to Ontario for out of patient care.

Of the 349 patients in hospital, 110 (or about 31.5 per cent) were not fully vaccinated.

Saskatchewan also documented one new deathwho was aged 80 or older, according to its COVID-19 dashboard. It adds to the now 990 deaths attributed to the virus since the pandemic started.

There are now 12,720 active cases, 167 more than Saturday and a little more than 10,000 higher than a month ago on Dec. 30. However, the active case count does not include cases confirmed by self-administered rapid tests.

The province reported 1,331 new PCR-confirmed cases of COVID-19, adding to the new total of 117,858 recorded cases of the virus since the pandemic began.

Given the 3,277 PCR tests conducted, more than every two in five people tested positive for the virus (40.6 per cent). The actual overall test positivityis likely higher because of the province's recommendation for asymptomatic people to forgo PCR testing.

Saskatchewan reported 1,644 new doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday. Of them, 455 were first doses and 1,189 were either the second dose of a mRNA vaccine, like Modern or Pfizer-BioNTech, or one dose of a Janssen vaccine.

Nearly 895,000 people are considered fully vaccinated, according to the province's COVID-19 dashboard. That is about 79.1per cent of the province's eligible population.