Restrictions seem to be staving off the flu in Sask., but COVID-19 numbers remain high

While COVID-19 continues to spread throughout Saskatchewan's population, the flu has been absent so far this season.

"Just like Australia saw in the winter, which was our summer, we are seeing no influenza," said  Dr. Saqib Shahab, the province's chief medical health officer.

"All the measures we're saying (social distancing, wearing masks etc.) is keeping something that used to come like clockwork every year at bay, but COVID is more infectious than influenza and it's not keeping COVID at bay." 

Premier Scott Moe said last season's flu statistics show how much deadlier COVID-19 has been. 

Moe pointed to how with no restrictions in place, from September 2019 to January 2020, there were 1,344 confirmed cases of the flu.

"Now, understanding not everyone would send away for lab results for the flu that would ultimately have it," Moe said.

"But many of our elderly and vulnerable, which we had 44 long term care outbreaks with influenza last year, resulted in a total over five months — September, October, November, December, January — with 11 deaths."

There has been significant flu testing in Canada during the pandemic. Almost 10,000 tests were done in the first week of November, compared to a six-year average of about 4,500.

"Where we are today with COVID is over 12,000 active cases, not 1,344. We have 91 deaths as of Monday," Moe said.

The province reported seven more COVID-related deaths on Tuesday, bringing the total to 98.

The worst week of influenza last season saw 224 cases in early January.

In the past seven days the province is averaging about 265 COVID-19 cases every day.

Moe said the mortality rate of COVID-19 is about nine times worse than the flu was over those five months, and that is with all of these restrictions now in place.

"This is a much more serious, serious virus for us to work our way through than even the influenza virus was last year, when we had two waves come through our population," Moe said.

According to a government health spokesperson, Saskatchewan's influenza season has not even begun and influenza case counts across Canada are extremely low for this time of year.

According to the federal government's latest FluWatch report [Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, 2020] there is no known influenza activity in Saskatchewan.

Fluwatch also states that to date this season, only 41 influenza cases have been detected in Canada.

That is "significantly lower than the past six seasons where an average of 3,055 influenza detections were reported between weeks 35-49."