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“Our anticipation and our hope is that we are doing even better than this.”

SHA CEO Scott Livingstone noted that Saskatchewan has recently seen “encouraging signs of flattening the curve.” Total cumulative cases are now 271, including 103 recoveries, and eight patients are in hospital with two in intensive care. Recoveries have matched or even exceeded recoveries in recent days, with new cases in the single digits on Monday and Tuesday.

Three Saskatchewan people with COVID-19 have died.

The SHA stressed that the model released Wednesday is not a prediction of the future, but a picture of what could happen. It aids planning efforts as the SHA moves to “drastically scale up” its capacity in advance of a potential surge.

Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer, said current data suggests Saskatchewan could be on track to do even better than the best-case scenario in the models.

But he said the numbers in the model are still “based in reality.”

“Those projections are based on real scenarios that have unfolded and I think that is something we have to keep in the back of our mind,” Shahab said.

Premier Scott Moe said the numbers alarmed him when he was briefed on them late Tuesday and early Wednesday.

“I wake up each and every morning waiting for the numbers to come in and just praying that there isn’t a death today. That’s what I do every morning,” he said. “So to have a model come out that indicates that, over the next period of time, there could be over 8,000 deaths, that for me personally is tremendously alarming.”