Saskatchewan's chief medical health officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab.

By CJME News

‘Now they’re getting concerned,’ Shahab says about health-care officials

Oct 19, 2020 | 12:50 PM

With fall well underway, Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer says those in the health-care system are starting to worry again.

“We’ve had low hospitalizations, (with) low ICU and hospital admissions. Now they’re getting concerned. Flu season is coming, winter is coming (and) if COVID starts picking up, that puts pressure on elective procedures and all that,” Dr. Saqib Shahab said in a conversation Monday on Gormley.

Saskatchewan added 100 new cases over the previous three days, increasing the total number of cases in October to 419. The provincial total as of Monday morning was 2,330.

Shahab said people need to do everything they can to keep case numbers low, which would include following oft-repeated public health guidelines and getting the flu shot.

He called for the public to exercise discipline and not to slip up on those practices, even if they’re in a public space for a brief period.

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“Mask use, I think, has been underutilized. We really have to be more diligent,” Shahab said.

There have been two recent “superspreader” events, one at a church in Prince Albert and the other at a party and nightclub in Saskatoon.

“I think we all need to use our common sense and have some patience,” Shahab said.

So far, Shahab said restaurants and bars have done a good job making sure guidelines are being followed by patrons.

He said two pieces of data need to be considered when deciding whether to roll back the reopening of the province.

The first is average number of new cases per day.

“Five per 100,000, that’s very concerning,” Shahab said. “Ten per 100,000, that’s approaching a number where we can’t sustain … for an indefinite period. That’s when we really want to turn things around.”

The other is how transmission is happening.

Generally, there have been small clusters of infections, Shahab said. When somebody is at home self-isolating, he said only about a quarter of households have seen other members of the home contract the virus.

“Our goal is that we all behave in a way that we keep those numbers as low as possible,” he said.