University of Saskatchewan researcher John Giesy says amount of coronavirus RNA in Saskatoon’s wastewater is “close to the highest we ever saw in the previous wave”.
“We plot the last three waves, so they can look now at how high things are relative to previous waves, and they're pretty high,” he said.
“When I talk about trends, things going up, things going down, one take-home message is that the numbers are still very, very high.”
Giesy says now that the province isn’t releasing daily COVID-19 updates their data has taken on a greater significance — but is limited in what it can tell researchers.
“We look for trends. We can tell you it's going up, it's going down, or it's sort of stable, and I can tell you what the different variants are. And that's pretty much the limit of what we can say.”
University of Saskatchewan epidemiologist Nazeem Muhajarine says the province’s Covid-19 information blackout is unfortunate and unconscionable at this point of the pandemic.
“It's quite inexplicable why the government is not reporting data. They have the capacity. The whole infrastructure is set up, the dashboards are there, nothing has changed, really, in terms of the capacity to report data.
"It is just a government decision not to share this data with people because their messaging, really, “don't worry about the data, don't worry about this data, just live as though it is no longer a concern.'"
Muhajarine says the lack of COVID-19 updates also means people aren’t up to date on new variants that might be surging in the province.
Giesy says the Omicron subvariant BA.1 is still the dominant virus in Saskatoon’s wastewater, and the subvariant BA.2, which he says is roughly one and a half times more transmissible, makes up less than one per cent.
Muhajarine a study last week found that BA.2 is also more virulent, particularly in the lower respiratory systems and the lungs compared to BA.1.
