COVID-19 in Sask.: 20 new deaths announced in weekly report
Nineteen more people are in hospital with COVID compared to last reporting period
Twenty more Saskatchewanians have died from COVID-19, per the province's weekly COVID report.
The data is for the week of March 20 to 26.
Though free PCR testing has fallen off and is largely inaccessible to the general population, the number of new laboratory-confirmed cases was about 34 per cent higher than the number of new cases in the previous week.
While the Regina zone had the lowest testing rate (1.8 tests per 1,000 population), it also had the highest test positivity rate at 18.2 per cent.
For emergency department visits, there were 25.7 COVID-like illness patients per 1,000 visits this reporting period. That's lower than the average weekly rate, which was calculated with six weeks' worth of data.
Nineteen more people are in hospital with COVID compared to the last reporting period.
The subvariant Omicron BA.2 accounted for 15.5 per cent of the variants of concern reported this week, which is down from 25.9 per cent the previous week.
Ten confirmed COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care and care home settings were also reported.
On the vaccine front, 80.6 per cent of the population over the age of five has completed a series of COVID-19 vaccines, while 51.3 per cent of those 18 years and older have at least one booster shot.
The Regina zone is the only zone reporting more than 80 per cent of the eligible population has completed a vaccine series, at 82.5 per cent. All others are below 80 per cent.