Public health officials announced today that amendments to the current public health order regarding indoor gatherings will now allow residents to extend their household “bubbles” to include a maximum of 10 people at a time, while worship services will also be allowed to expand later this month.
The amendment to household contacts is effective beginning March 9, said a provincial press release, and there are several details residents will have to follow.
The 10 individuals included in a household bubble must be from two to three consistent households, and the total gathering inside a house cannot exceed 10 people.
Households are expected to be consistently within their bubble, and not participating in several different bubbles with different households.
Public health is also asking residents to continue to assess the risk of COVID-19 transmission before joining households, and to choose households that are low risk. This means considering if there are any individuals at an elevated risk like seniors, or if there are individuals who are still participating in public spaces like children attending school or adults working outside the home, who may complicate a contact tracing investigation.
Even when utilizing a bubble, households should still be able to count the number of individuals that could be involved in a potential contact investigation should a COVID-19 positive case be identified.
Public health said that if the potential risk of transmission remains high after those considerations, households should consider creating their bubbles with a different, lower-risk household or remain within their own.
Public health is also advising that any residents age 50 or older should consider limiting their contacts to their household until they are vaccinated.
All other public health orders remain in place, including mandatory masking in public spaces and a limit of 10 people at outdoor gatherings.
Additionally, beginning on March 19, worship services will once again be allowed to welcome up to 30 per cent of capacity or 150 attendees, whichever is the lesser number.
Attendees will still have to maintain a two-metre distance between each other if they are not from the same household group, and masks will still be required, including for choir groups and performers.
The provincial government said that the decision to relax these guidelines was made due to Saskatchewan’s continual declining trend in confirmed COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
For more information on the current public health orders regarding COVID-19 in Saskatchewan, visit saskatchewan.ca/COVID19-measures.
