The one-year anniversary of COVID-19 arriving in Saskatchewan approaches, but while there won't likely be many birthday celebrations, there is at least some positive news. A quick look at the trend in active cases in the province shows the numbers have been steadily headed down. 

At one point in January, active cases of the virus were over 4000. As of the latest update from the province, they're now down to 1425. Wednesday's 56 new cases was the lowest single-day total of 2021 and it came despite over 2100 tests. 

"Saskatchewan is now entering the third week of a consistent, slow decline in active cases and hospitalizations," said Saskatchewan's Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab. "Although we did see a bit of a concerning uptick this last weekend, overall our seven-day average is going down from 15.5 (cases per hundred thousand) on February 9, 13.6 on February 16 to 12.7 (February 23)."

Test positivity is also trending down to an average of about seven percent, though Wednesday's numbers were far lower than that. This trend mirrors what is happening in other western provinces, though some of those provinces provide a cautionary tale as well.  

"Some provinces are also seeing a bit of a plateau," Dr. Shahab said. "This reinforces that we really need to stay the course overall, and especially with the variants of concern it's important we keep our overall numbers trending downward, which gives us the space to have a successful vaccination program."

Those variants of concern have appeared in Saskatchewan six times so far, with five out of six being the UK variant and the other one being from South Africa. Keeping those numbers down will help healthcare professionals focus on vaccines rather than on things like contact tracing.  

"Starting with our seniors, we start this very ambitious vaccination program to finally come out of this pandemic through a successful vaccination program," Dr. Shahab said. 

So far, there have been 63,345 doses of the two COVID-19 vaccines administered in Saskatchewan so far. That includes 46 percent of long-term care residents and 24 percent of personal care home residents receiving both shots and being fully vaccinated against the virus. The province has given 81 percent of long-term care residents at least one shot.