COVID-19 pandemic in Saskatchewan

The COVID-19 pandemic in Saskatchewan is part of an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

The first presumptive case of COVID-19 in the province was announced on March 12, 2020, and within a week the government declared a state of emergency and instituted broad public health measures to combat the spread of the virus, including the closure of businesses and public facilities.^[1] The province's first death from COVID-19 was recorded on March 30 2020.^[2] Through 2022, when the province began to continually decrease its regular public reporting on the pandemic, Saskatchewan ranked as one of the hardest hit provinces in Canada in terms of per capita case counts and deaths from COVID-19. Moreover, the province's health care system has been severely strained by the pandemic, resulting at one point in 2021 in the province transferring more than two dozen intensive-care unit (ICU) patients to Ontario for treatment.^[3] After the institution of public health measures in March 2020, the Saskatchewan Party government led by Premier Scott Moe prioritized lifting and avoiding such measures, opting to keep businesses and schools open, particularly once vaccines became widely available. Saskatchewan was the first province to lift all pandemic-related public health measures in July 2021 and again in February 2022.^[4][5] The latter change was made amidst a convoy protest occupying Ottawa partly organized by a truck driver from Saskatchewan.^[6] As of July, 2023, 2,000 people in Saskatchewan have died from COVID-19.^[7]