(File photo/CJME News staff)

By Logan Stein/CJME News

‘We are really nervous’: Experts weigh in on Saskatchewan’s fourth wave

Sep 15, 2021 | 12:14 PM

With Saskatchewan reporting the most COVID-19 cases we have seen since the start of the pandemic, more experts around the province are sounding the alarm.

Dr. Alex Wong, an infectious disease physician in Regina, joined the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Wednesday and called the current situation dire.

“Our ICU capacity is pretty much at the brink. We’re talking about cancelling procedures, surgeries (and) other things,” Wong said. “That’s a significant disruption to the health-care system.

“There was an order put in place to reinstate the ability to kind of redeploy people around the province and so forth, because that’s really where we are at right now.

“With the way things are going right now and the exponential growth of our cases — as well as our hospitalizations and ICU admissions — we are all really, really, really nervous.”

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On Monday, the Saskatchewan government issued a new provincial emergency order to ensure health-care workers can be moved around to address COVID-19 concerns in Saskatchewan.

According to Tuesday’s data released by the Saskatchewan Health Authority, there are 225 people with COVID in hospitals around the province — including 43 people in intensive care.

Those numbers are a huge cause for concern for Wong.

He believes something needs to be done soon to ensure some hospitals in the province don’t get overwhelmed.

“I don’t want our doctors and our health-care providers to be in a situation where we can’t provide optimal care to all citizens,” Wong said.

“We are just desperately trying to advocate for measures that are going to be proactive, that are going to allow us to maintain that capacity so we don’t have to make those really, really hard decisions.”

Reinstating an indoor mask mandate along with figuring out a way to encourage a higher vaccination uptake are two things of priority that Wong believes needs to be done.

“I really believe we need to focus our energy on figuring out how to mobilize policy in order to get us out of this as quickly as possible,” he said. “We just need to slow this surge down before it gets too far out of hand as it has for example in Alberta.”

Carrie Dornstauder, the SHA’s interim emergency operations centre test strategy chief, also made an appearance on Wednesday’s show.

She described the struggles the SHA is having when it comes to turning around COVID test results quicker, as well as handling contact tracing during this spike in cases.

“(On Tuesday) we were struggling quite significantly to meet our turnaround times and to address those close contacts in a timely fashion where they can reach out and have conversations with their family and loved ones,” Dornstauder said.

“We will be moving to a point where we’re going to ask people to take that accountability in their own hands just to help us reduce the spread. We are concerned that’s the way that we need to go.”

Dornstauder says COVID testing has been ramping up all around Saskatchewan and the SHA is working on making rapid antigen tests more easily accessible and available to anyone in the province who might need one.

More businesses are interested about rapid testing, too. Dornstauder said roughly 345 businesses across the province have inquired about it.

“It really shows that they really care about their staff and the people that are coming into their business,” she said. “So we just keep asking for people to get involved and do their part.”

More information on rapid testing can be found here.