10 new cases of COVID 19 were announced Tuesday, with six of the cases located in Saskatoon, two in Regina, one in the far northeast, and one in the central west region.

Two of the new cases reported Tuesday are linked to the workplace outbreak previously identified at Brandt Industries. To date, there have been 19 cases linked to this cluster. The latest confirmed cases are from testing completed on close contacts of the employees and are not occurring in the workplace itself.

146 cases in the province are considered active.

Nine people are currently in hospital, with eight receiving inpatient care, and one in intensive care.

The following information was also provided by the government of Saskatchewan;

Supporting COVID-19 Testing

The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) has been increasing testing capacity including enhancing staffing resources to better enable provincial laboratory teams to sustainably meet the goal of 4,000 COVID-19 tests per day.

Staffing: SHA labs are hiring 76 positions. To date, 27 people have been hired. Recruitment and training for the remaining positions is on-going.

Asymptomatic Pooled Testing: Starting this week, SHA labs will implement pooled testing of asymptomatic swabs, allowing laboratories to test more specimens with fewer testing materials, increasing testing output.
Pooled testing means combining a number of specimens and conducting one laboratory test to detect COVID-19. If any pooled test produces a positive result, all samples within the batch will be retested individually before results are released.

Increasing GeneXpert Testing: The SHA will increase the number of GeneXpert tests being performed provincially from 200 per week to 1,200 per week in early October due to increased supplies from the vendor.
The GeneXpert is a molecular testing platform located in more than 20 locations throughout the province, providing more immediate diagnostics on-site. It significantly expands testing capacity while improving turn-around times.