Newswire

[March 11, 2020] Today, March 11, the World Health Organization has declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic. While Canada currently has 96 confirmed cases and one death – and as of 3:30 p.m. Saskatchewan has no cases – more than 121,000 people have been infected with the virus worldwide. As registered nurses we are neither nervous nor afraid – as a profession,…

The dispatches from the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak in northern Italy are chilling.  "Nurses with tears in their eyes because we can't save everyone … Every ventilator becomes like gold." That was the message last week from Dr. Daniele Macchini, an Italian physician whose lengthy Facebook post was published in a local newspaper, translated into…

The coronavirus outbreak has been labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of cases outside China had increased 13-fold over the past two weeks. He said he was "deeply concerned" by "alarming levels of inaction" over the virus. A pandemic is a disease that is spreading in multiple countries around…

Provincial health officials are still at work updating a 10-year-old strategy for combating a pandemic, as the NDP accuses the health ministry of having no plan if a COVID-19 outbreak strikes Saskatchewan. Opposition health critic Vicki Mowat argued that the ministry is simply “dusting off” an outdated document designed for the H1N1 virus. “This is a new virus,” she…