Saskatchewan Health officials say their COVID-19 projections are not about what they think is going to happen but are for planning purposes.
They feel they may have a more realistic idea in a week, or so, and despite providing numbers of patients who could be hospitalized or dead, they have no time frame in which these numbers would come to fruition.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority has released its projected scenarios for COVID-19 to plan for hospital and response capacity, which suggests that at its peak anywhere from 390 at the low end to 4,265 COVID-19 patients would be in an acute care hospital simultaneously.
Dynamic modelling looks at “what if” types of scenarios and in this case looks at low, medium and high counts, none of which are set in stone.
CEO Scott Livingstone says the province could see between 153,000 and 408,000 total cases of COVID-19.
Dedicated spaces within hospitals are being segregated for COVID-19 patients and as the numbers increase, if needed, 20 of the province’s 65 hospitals would be designated specifically for pandemic patients.
If it gets to the point of needing more beds, Evraz Place in Regina and Merlish Belsher Place in Saskatoon will be used as field hospitals.
As of April 5th, 43 per cent of Saskatchewan’s acute care beds were available for use in preparation for the surge.
The Health Authority is also trying to find beds in long term care facilities for patients in hospitals where that would be more appropriate, to free up more space.
Livingstone says the province has 450 ventilators which meets the demand at their estimated low and mid-range scenarios but there is a gap of 410 ventilators at the top range.
However, there are confirmed orders for 200 with 100 of those expected in the next few weeks and multiple orders for invasive and non-invasive ventilators have been placed.
The SHA, the Health Ministry and the federal government are working to close the gap on ventilator availability.
Livingstone emphasizes the best way to make sure there isn’t a worst case scenario is for everyone to follow the guidelines of hand hygiene, physical distancing and staying home.
Premier Responds:
Premier Scott Moe says when he first saw the modelling projections with COVID-19 deaths in the province reaching over 8-thousand in the worst case scenario, he was alarmed.
However, he stresses this is not an estimate – these numbers are to help the Saskatchewan Health Authority plan for capacity.
Moe is encouraged by the case numbers seen in recent days with active cases of COVID-19 down in the province by 4 to 165 on Wednesday, and 38 per cent of those with the virus have recovered.
He understands it’s going to take some time for things to get back to normal, but warns that it won’t happen all at once.
A restriction may be eased and then there will be monitoring to see what happens to the transmission numbers, which could lead to other restrictions being eased or being added back.
The government’s target is to get up to 1-thousand tests per day as soon as possible and up to 15-hundred by the end of April.
To date, there have been 15-thousand-621 COVID-19 tests
Saskatchewan has the second highest rate of testing per capita among the provinces.
To help with the economic impacts of the pandemic, Moe says there is a Sask First Resource and Recovery Plan, which will be introduced on Thursday.
