SASKATOON —
The Saskatoon area continues to have a greater concentration of confirmed COVID-19 cases than any other area of the province including Regina, prompting questions about why.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) says part of the reason is because of the nature of the virus and how cases are tracked.
“The reality is this bug likes to do what it wants to do and Saskatoon has had some circumstances where we just had some clusters and the high case count is because we did our job really well. And that we identified a particular case and then with that, very quickly, did that look around, that search, that contact tracing,” Medical Health Officer Dr. Jasmine Hasselback said during a news conference on Thursday..
The SHA was also provided more detail about the plan for a potential field hospital in Saskatoon. The health authority says they are likely going to begin setup early next week and are looking at using Merlis Belsher Place and the Field House as a one-unit field hospital.
“We will be monitoring daily our capacity for staff, the beds and any other supplies or materials that we need so that we actually ready the field hospital before we needed,” incident commander Suzanne Mahaffey said.
The SHA already started looking at detailed footprints for the field hospital. As the demand increases the SHA said they want to be one step ahead.
As for staffing, the SHA says they have a supplemental workforce to draw from for human resources and physicians.
“Our family physicians and specialists and others who are currently not working for SHA have completed an online skills assessment of their availability and their interest and their competence to work for us. So we will have a combination of existing health care providers and our supplemental workforce,” Mahaffey said.
