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Over 3,000 stuffed animals were tossed onto the ice.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in the Regina area went over the 100 mark for the first time Thursday, when the provincial government revealed there had been discrepancies in earlier reports.
According to the Ministry of Health, there were 78 people receiving inpatient care and 23 people in intensive care in the Regina area. Across the province, hospitalizations went from 166 on Wednesday to 193 on Thursday.
Scott Livingstone, the CEO of the Saskatchewan Health Authority, said there were a number of factors that went into the discrepancy, but the big one was how the patients were being counted.
“The designation of patients that have been moved into those temporary ICU beds on other wards, those weren’t being counted as ICU admissions, so that’s been the single-biggest contributor,” said Livingstone.
The problem had only been happening for a short time, since the hospital in Regina was seeing a surge in bed capacity.
Across Saskatchewan, there are 34 people in ICUs. Saskatoon (10) and the central-east region (one) had the other ICU cases.
In a statement, the government said Wednesday’s update should have said there were 192 people in hospital, including 33 in ICU. It also should have said there were 88 people in hospital in the Regina region, with 22 in ICU.
Health Minister Paul Merriman said the people of Saskatchewan “expect and deserve” accurate reporting and this is not acceptable.
Merriman explained that hospitalizations are one of the measures Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer uses to make recommendations to the government, and he requires accurate information.
“We have come up short in this regard,” said Merriman.
The ministry Thursday also reported 199 new cases of COVID, 205 recoveries and nine more confirmed cases of variants of concern. There weren’t any new deaths reported.
A look at the numbers
The total number of variant cases now stands at 1,682. There have been 1,348 cases in the Regina region, 129 in the south-central zone, 109 in the southeast, 53 in the Saskatoon region, 27 in the central-east zone, nine in the north-central area, five in the central-west region and one in each of the southwest and far northeast areas.
The number of variant cases in Regina didn’t change from Wednesday’s report. There were seven new cases in Saskatoon.
Whole genome sequencing determined 395 new lineages, increasing that total so far to 890. Of those, 882 are the United Kingdom variant and eight are the South African strain.
The Regina zone accounts for 744 of those cases.
The new COVID cases reported Thursday increased the total to date to 33,789.
The latest cases were in the Regina (115), southeast (28), Saskatoon (14), south-central (13), northeast (10), north-central (nine), central-east (five), far northeast (three), central-west (one) and southwest (one) zones.
The seven-day average of daily new cases is 206, or 16.8 per 100,000 population.
So far, 31,404 recoveries have been reported. There are 1,949 active cases in the province.
The 3,982 tests done in Saskatchewan on Wednesday hiked that total so far to 669,431.
Vaccination update
There were 7,706 doses of COVID-19 vaccine given in Saskatchewan on Wednesday, increasing the total so far to 200,633.
The latest shots were given in the Saskatoon (2,294), Regina (2,110), central-east (1,111), southwest (839), southeast (527), far northwest (381), far northeast (262), south-central (101), north-central (48), northeast (22) and central-west (11) zones.
A shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the United States was to arrive in Saskatchewan on Thursday, with deliveries set for Regina (29,100), Saskatoon (11,000), Prince Albert (4,300) and North Battleford (900).
A Moderna shipment now is expected to arrive in the province the week of April 12.
Meanwhile, the provincial government continued to roll out new ads for its “Stick it to COVID” campaign. The latest instalments feature Saskatchewan Roughriders legend George Reed and a Swift Current mom with an immunocompromised child.