There were 386 COVID-19 vaccine doses administered yesterday in Saskatchewan, bringing the total number of vaccines administered in the province to 79,289.

There are 154 new cases of COVID-19 to report in Saskatchewan on March 1, bringing the provincial total to 28,801 cases.

No additional Saskatchewan residents who tested positive for COVID-19 have died.

There are a total of 26,865 recoveries and 1,551 cases are considered active. One hundred and fifty-one people are in hospital.

The Roy Romanow Provincial Laboratory (RRPL) has completed the validation process in order to support whole-genome sequencing.  This test determines that a positive COVID-19 case is a variant of concern, as well as what type of variant.  Starting immediately, the RRPL has the capacity to test up to 192 samples per week. In order to monitor for variants of concern, the RRPL will continue to focus whole-genome sequencing testing on COVID positive results linked to international travel, declared outbreaks and cases of unexpected severe illness, as well as a random sampling of confirmed cases. The province will continue to send up to 120 samples per week to the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg to ensure a larger sample size.