Current wave of COVID-19 receding in much of the world, including Saskatchewan

By Brian Zinchuk, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Regina – According the John Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, as of Feb. 11, Canada is currently 22nd in the world for the number of COVID-19 cases it has had to date. Nearly every country above it, as well as Canada, is on the backside of either its second or third wave, with new case counts having significantly declined almost universally in the last two months. This has happened just as vaccinations started their very slow rate of dispersal.

For Saskatchewan, it meant this province continues to trend in the right direction, according to Premier Scott Moe, during the during the regular provincial COVID-19 briefing on Feb. 11 in the Legislature.

“As of today, our seven-day average of new cases is down now to 182. That is the lowest since January 3rd, and down about 43 per cent from the peak on January the 12th.” Moe said.

Asked how this plays for Saskatchewan, Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab said, “We have known for a long time, even before the COVID pandemic came, that pandemics come in waves and they can be one, two, three, four waves.

“And second, we also know that respiratory viruses like coronaviruses do have a seasonality. They're more likely to have a stronger wave in winter months, and that's what we've seen. But, you know, the way viruses behave is that they go up, and we have to work very hard to make that peak as low as possible, through public health measures, other interventions, and then the wave recedes, like you mentioned, this receding in many parts of the world. But we have to make sure that whenever the wave comes, it causes the least damage that we can incur and, unfortunately, throughout Canada and the northern hemisphere, and the fall wave has had devastating consequences for many jurisdictions.

He continued, “Hopefully, we are on the downswing, but we can't let a guard down because, we still have more than 95 per cent of the population not immune. We already seen in the UK, they had a severe second wave. We didn't have a severe first wave. We had a very small first wave, mostly linked to international travel. We had a quiet summer. Many parts of the world had a devastating first wave including the U.K., parts of the U.S.

“Parts of the U.S. never went down; they had sustained transmission throughout the summer, which we didn't have. The U.K. had a devastating second wave, and then as they were coming out of it, through a severe lockdown, they had the variant strain pick up, and they had a devastating third wave, which is even worse than the second wave.

Shahab concluded, “So, I think we have been very fortunate. We have done well. But we really can't let our guard down, and we really have to stay the course with our public health measures, well into our vaccine program, till you know we have a large proportion of the population vaccinated. We really have to stay the course of the public health measures.”