Saskatchewan clears 2,000 COVID-19 cases off active list in one week

The total number of active COVID-19 cases reported in Saskatchewan isn't dropping because people are recovering quicker it'sdropping because the government is catching up to a backlog.

Last week, the province saidthe number of known active cases might be inflated due to a backlog ofdata review.

Recovery totals have fluctuated wildly over the last two weeks. On Saturday, the government reported713 recoveries. Therewere 73 on Monday,363 on Tuesday,and 154 on Wednesday.

Last week, Health Minister Paul Merriman flagged that the active case numbers would be dropping as staff caught up to a "data lag."

On Dec. 9, the province reported 6,121 recovered cases and 4,707active cases.

One week later, the province reported8,283 recovered cases and 4,213 active cases.

The result:an increase of 2,162 recoveries in seven days, and a decrease of 494 active cases.

The drop in active caseshas put Saskatchewan third among provinces in active cases per 100,000. As of Tuesday, Saskatchewan had 358 cases per 100,000people, according to Health Canada data fewer thanAlberta (472) and Manitoba (421), but more thanB.C. (216).

How Saskatchewan marks a case 'recovered'

The Ministry of Health has two criteria for considering a case recovered:

• Receivinga negative test result with nosymptoms for 48 hours.
• Completing 14 days self-isolation following a positive test result, and no symptoms for 48 hours.

"We anticipate the number of cases designated as active may decline as older cases are reviewed and potentially shifted to recovered status. This work is underway," Ministry of Health spokesperson Jennifer Graham said lastweek.

Saskatchewan Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab said Monday that measures announced on Nov. 27 resulted in slowing the rate of new infections, but with a current seven-day average of more than 200 new cases a day, contact tracers are still facing "significant challenges."

"We need to help public health with contact tracingand the way to do that is to keep our contact numbers low," Shahab said.

On a positive note, Shahab said the average number of close contacts per new case is dropping from eight down to five.

With Wednesday's seven-day averageat 243 new cases per day, though,an average of five contacts would equal more than 1,200 potential close contacts for tracers to reach out to every day, on averageand more than 8,500 in a week.

On Nov. 27, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said it hadmore than 350 staff trained for contact tracing, and it was preparing for 450 new cases per day.

Wednesday'sdaily seven-day average of 243 wasthe same level the province was at on Nov. 26.

Shahab has saidindicators like average daily cases and test positivity rate are more useful in tracking the virus than total active cases.

Saskatchewan's test positivity rate remains around eight per cent.