For the moment, it’s almost all gone.
No cases of COVID-19 remain active in Manitoba’s Flin Flon/Snow Lake/Cranberry Portage/Sherridon district. One case is now active in the far north east 2 health zone in Saskatchewan covering Creighton, Denare Beach and other nearby communities.
The Flin Flon district is one of several districts in the Northern Health Region (NHR) where one or no active cases of COVID-19 are currently present, according to provincial government statistics. Four northern districts, including the Flin Flon district, Churchill (covered by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority), Gillam/Fox Lake and Lynn Lake/Marcel Colomb/Leaf Rapids/O-Pipon-Na-Piwin/Granville Lake have no active cases.
By contrast, the NHR still has 204 active cases of the disease as of July 20, with more than 40 per cent of those active cases in The Pas/OCN/Kelsey district. That district has 85 active cases as of July 20, but real totals may be much lower as active cases spiked last month and reported recoveries in the region have not increased substantially weeks later. For example, the NHR reported no new cases July 19, but also did not report any new recoveries - weeks after cases spiked.
The Pas’ numbers rank the district ahead of the second-highest district, the Shamattawa/York Factory/Tataskweyak/Split Lake district, which has 66 active cases but may also have a lag in recovery reporting. Such delays are usually offset by data corrections, which typically occur every few weeks and show changes for several northern - especially very remote - jurisdictions.
No other northern district has more than 20 cases - only two other districts have active case counts in the double digits as of July 20.
Meanwhile, after a long period of time with no active cases, a new active case was found in the Saskatchewan far north east 2 health zone last weekend. No other cases have been reported in the health zone.
Northern Saskatchewan has seen increasing case numbers, mostly due to the far north east region, but not in the portion of the region that contains Creighton, Denare Beach, Pelican Narrows, Sandy Bay or Deschambault Lake. The reason for the surge is an ongoing outbreak at Hatchet Lake Dene Nation at Wollaston Lake, a remote community about 280 kilometres north of Flin Flon near the Northwest Territories border. The Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority (NITHA) reported over 100 cases in the area as of July 13, but July 18 data shows no more than 33 cases are in the area.
