SHA warns COVID at risk of spinning out of control
A recent Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) presentation to doctors warned that COVID-19 is spreading exponentially in the province, with transmission at risk of breaking out of control far beyond Regina.
The presentation, which was offered to physicians on Thursday and posted to an SHA website on Monday, noted that the hundreds of daily cases reported in Saskatchewan are just the tip of the iceberg. Testing rates remain low in much of rural Saskatchewan, it pointed out, and in cities like Moose Jaw, Yorkton and Weyburn.
A map attached to the presentation shows that areas at risk of uncontrolled transmission have spread far beyond southern Saskatchewan and Saskatoon. Almost the entire province below the boreal forest is now in that troubling category.
“We are in exponential growth provincially,” said the presentation.
Meanwhile, the severity of COVID-19 illness is increasing, especially among younger people. Patients are suffering more acute illness and are “decompensating quicker.” A graph shows the proportion of patients under 60 in Regina intensive care units increased rapidly from early March to early April, when it made up the large majority of such patients.
Pressed on the numbers during question period on Monday, Premier Scott Moe pivoted back to the government's successful vaccine plan.
But Dr. Cory Neudorf, a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, said it will take until at least June for vaccination to bring the spread under control.
“We'll be seeing more beds filled with COVID patients and more ICU patients in the coming weeks as we start to see the peaks of these cases bearing out,” he said. “ICUS overall for the province could become just as stretched as we see in Regina right now.”
There were 26 COVID-19 patients in Regina ICUS on Monday, according to the government's daily update.
Regina has the strictest public health measures in the province, and Health Minister Paul Merriman said the situation is now “stabilizing ” in the capital as daily cases hover around 100. But Neudorf now sees a need to expand those restrictions elsewhere, given the risk of further uncontrolled spread.
“At least the level of restriction Regina is seeing, and potentially even more,” he recommended.
Merriman said he's meeting with chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab to discuss what, if any, new measures will be announced on Tuesday. But he acknowledged there are signs that “hot spot areas” are expanding.
NDP Leader Ryan Meili said the SHA warnings show the health care system is under real threat. In his view, Moe's sanguine messaging about the light at the end of the tunnel now seems even more out of place.
“How many times now have the doctors of the province been presented one set of information that looks so different from what the premier is deciding to say about the situation?” Meili said.
“Why does he try to spin out a fairy tale that everything's going well to the public, and then the SHA always tells the truth to the doctors?
“I think we should trust the people of Saskatchewan with the truth all the time,” he continued.
The SHA presentation also details the relative success of Saskatchewan's vaccine effort, which led all other provinces on a per-capita basis.
But concerns about Astrazeneca vaccine side effects may be keeping some away, and the SHA is aiming to put risk in context.
In the presentation, it highlights that the chance of developing rare blood clots associated with the vaccine is extremely low, at around four in a million.
That, it notes, is the “same order of risk of being injured by lightning on any given year.”
“The fact is that you have a greater chance of getting a blood clot from flying on an airplane that you do from Astrazeneca — by a sizable margin,” it added.