The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) is slowing down non-critical services once again.

Reducing some elective services will allow them to redeploy staff and expand their surge capacity to meet what is already becoming an ongoing issue due to the surge in Delta Variant COVID-19 cases currently making its way mostly through unvaccinated individuals in the province.

Similar to slow-down directives in the past, they have announced targeted postponements of elective and non-urgent surgical procedures, as well as hospital patient transfers in order to load-level the capacity across the province.

The directive to the SHA teams include:

  • Surge from a baseline of 79 ICU beds up to 130 to accommodate a projected 80 COVID ICU patients as well as maintain care for on average 50 non-COVID ICU patients.
  • Flex up hospital capacity across the province in order to care for an additional 255 COVID non-ICU patients.

In the second part of the announcement, the SHA also announced that it would be redeploying resources in order to expand testing and access to COVID-19 vaccines.

  • Target of having individuals tested within 24 to 48 hours of their call for an appointment, or have to wait no more than 90 minutes at a drive-thru.
  • Immunization teams are continuing to balance their efforts to increase first and second dose uptake through outreach clinics, schools and access to booster shots.