What you missed this weekend: COVID cases drop, vaccines hit 800,000

Large, rising figures on one end, dropping, lower numbers on the other.

The COVID-19 snapshot for Saskatchewan looks a lot different for the first Monday of June compared to May. This Monday, the province has 1,196 active cases compared to 2,397 a month earlier.

Even week to week, Saskatchewan dropped 234 active cases — definitely a number continuing to drop.

Oh, and the province is now technically back to early November levels for those active cases; the most comparable figure came on Nov. 8, when Saskatchewan had 1,122 active cases in the province.

There were just 172 new cases combined on Saturday and Sunday, and neither day hit triple digits. But another figure dropping is testing.

Saskatchewan topped off its daily totals with 2,798 tests Wednesday. The lowest daily total this week was Tuesday when 1,719 were tested.

The positivity rates fluctuated from 6.5 per cent to 3.4 per cent throughout the week.

And what’s on the way up? Vaccinations — in a big way.

There were 30,309 vaccinations done over the weekend, allowing Saskatchewan to hit 800,000 total doses given. We squeaked past that number in Sunday’s update and now stand at 800,772.

So far, 78 per cent of Saskatchewanians 40 and up have their first dose; 72 per cent of those 30 and up do as well.

To date, 67 per cent of adults have their first doses while 65 per cent of everyone over the age of 12 has their first dose.

Thus far, 131,715 have “stuck it to COVID” and have both their shots. Just under 54,000 more second doses were given this week; we had just 77,767 administered this time last week.

Hospitalizations also briefly dropped to under 100 before an uptick back into the triple digits on Sunday. That number stood at 101 after Sunday’s update.