A COVID-19 outbreak at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre has forced the province to look at ways to limit the spread of the virus.

A total of 85 positive cases have been identified at the facility, 72 offenders and 13 staff members. 72 of those cases were announced on Thursday.

Noel Busse with the Ministry of Corrections says they are working diligently to stop the spread.

“We’re working to ensure the transmission of COVID-19 can be controlled and mitigated as much as possible,” said Busse. “We’re also working with our partners in policing, public prosecutions, and the courts to reduce the overall impact of the outbreak on the justice system.”

Some of the measures being taken include temporarily pausing admittance of new offenders into the Saskatoon facility, with recently charged offenders and those in remand being redirected to Regina or Prince Albert. All new offenders being admitted will be quarantined for 14 days, and masks will be worn by all offenders and staff at all times.

When asked if the facilities in Regina and Prince Albert would be able to house the redirected offenders safely, Busse said that he is very confident that they will.

“We’re confident that we’ll be able to manage the extra offender population in those facilities in the short-term,” said Busse. “In the longer term, we may look at using additional space at other correctional facilities to ensure we’ll be able to effectively manage the population.”

With such a large number of positive tests coming back this week, Busse says the goal is to now test as many people at the Saskatoon facility as possible.

“Given that we tested a large amount of people, and we had such a high number of cases come back, we will be doing ongoing testing in the facility,” said Busse. “Whether that’s going to cover everyone in the facility, I guess remains to be seen, but we are going to do a large amount of testing to get a better picture of what’s happening in this facility, so we can manage it better.”