It was a day that everyone knew would eventually arrive, as yesterday the government announced that the first two COVID-19 deaths had occurred in the province.

Two victims from different areas of the province, with their age the only thing that they had in common; both were in their seventies.

A link to travel has been definitively confirmed for one of the victims. But perhaps more importantly, the second death has no such link, although that investigation is still ongoing.

Doctor Saqib Shahab, the province's chief medical health officer explained that even though they are calling the death community transmission at this time, the victim may have had some family links in either Saskatchewan or neighbouring provinces; noting that due to the nature of the case, collecting that kind of confirmation may take some time.

"Obviously it's a hard time for the family and we have to do it rather sensitively, but we do try to gather further information as much as we can to see if there was a link to another case or to any event or travel. But at this point, we don't have that."

He added that as a province, Saskatchewan is entering a phase where it is going to begin to see more cases linked to community transmission and therefore more deaths, but that both he and the premier were hopeful that the steps that have been taken since the first cases appeared; closing schools and non-essential businesses, limiting gatherings and imposing self-isolation on returning travellers; will lead to those cases of local transmission beginning to drop.

"We really hope that over the next two weeks or so our cases that are linked to gatherings or events will diminish because there really aren't a lot of gatherings happening."

He also chose to look at the other side of that coin; noting that while the province had seen its first two deaths, the province now has fourteen cases that have recovered. While yes, more deaths are going to be expected, a greater number of people will be recovering from now on as well.

Of particular interest from Doctor Shahab was when he was asked by a reporter why they did not release the regions where the deaths occurred, answering first of course that it was to protect the victims' privacy, but also dismissing the importance of location data, saying that it was of little value to the public.

"Case numbers while we do show them because there's some interest in the public, it is of no value. So if I live in a part of the province where there are fewer cases because of lower population density, the case rate actually is very similar throughout the province and it doesn't help in changing my behaviour anyway because I have to behave exactly the same anywhere in the province."

He argued that it's more important for the public to realize that they shouldn't look at a map and think about whether their risk is higher or lower on any particular day because those numbers don't change based on where the cases are located.