Ontario, Quebec have entered another COVID-19 wave. Could Saskatchewan be next?
CBC
An epidemiologist says it's "a matter of weeks" before Saskatchewan is hit with its next wave of COVID-19, as the fast-spreading Omicron BA.5 subvariant is already dominating other jurisdictions.
"This next surge of cases of COVID-19 is coming sooner than we had expected," said Nazeem Muhajarine, a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan.
On Wednesday, Ontario's top doctor confirmed that the province has officially entered its seventh COVID wave, driven by the BA.5 subvariant. Quebec's seventh wave has also begun, officials said Thursday.
Saskatchewan has experienced previous waves of COVID weeks after other provinces.
The BA.5 subvariant is also the dominant variant in the United States, accounting for 53.6 per cent of variants as of July 2, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The BA.4 sublineage made up 16.5 per cent of the variants in circulation in the U.S., for a combined 70.1 per cent of variants, the latest data showed.
BA.5 has so far only made up a small percentage of variants in Saskatchewan, according to the most recent data shared by the province. But the data is weeks too old.
The last report the government shared, covering the week of June 19 to 25, showed the BA.2 subvariant accounted for 95.2 per cent of variants, while BA.5 accounted for 3.6 per cent — an increase of 2.5 per cent from the previous week — and BA.4 accounted for zero per cent.
The province has stopped sharing weekly COVID information and will now do so monthly.
Muhajarine said that by the time the next report is released, on July 21, BA.5 will likely be the dominant variant.
Dr. Cory Neudorf, an epidemiologist and interim senior medical health officer with the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), agreed.
"It's pretty much inevitable at this point that it will become the dominant strain over the summer," Neudorf said Thursday.
"How fast that increase will be during the summer is unclear at this point. It really depends on what people's behaviour is like."
Neudorf pointed out that Saskatchewan's COVID situation differs from other jurisdictions such as Ontario.
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