SASKATOON -- The Saskatoon area now has more active COVID-19 cases than anywhere else in Saskatchewan.

As of Tuesday's provincial update, the Saskatoon area had 507 active cases. The Regina area had 482.

While the daily totals are nearly matched, Regina's active case count continues a downward trend.

Saskatoon's active case count seems to be showing a stubborn refusal to drop.

One week ago, as of May 4, the Regina area had 678 active cases of COVID-19. Saskatoon had 498.

A week prior, on April 27, the Regina area had 838 cases. The Saskatoon area had close to the current total: 483.

Cory Neudorf, an epidemiology and community health professor at the University of Saskatchewan, pointed to Saskatoon’s inconsistent daily new case count as a concerning sign.

"That shows things are still unstable, and the variants of concern are making up a higher and higher proportion of our total cases,” he said.

“So, not out of the woods yet.”

The Saskatoon area now sits a cumulative total of 1,064 variant COVID-19 cases. The province does not provide a breakdown of how many cases are active.

Fourteen days prior, as of the April 27 update, the variant total for the Saskatoon area sat at 687— which works out to 377 new variant cases within the previous 14 days.

There are also more people in Saskatoon's hospitals due to COVID-19, 61 receiving in-patient care compared to 40 in Regina as of Tuesday's update.

However, Regina still has more patients in intensive care, 19, compared to 13 in Saskatoon.

The last time the Saskatoon area's active case count was higher than the Regina area's was on Feb. 20. 

During a news conference in Regina on Tuesday, both Premier Scott Moe and Chief Medical Health Officer Saqib Shahab described the situation in Saskatoon as "stable."

"I would categorize it as fairly stable in and around 500 cases for a number of weeks now Regina thankfully has dropped down to be below," Moe said.

Shabab said another thing working in the area's favour is an absence of "super spreader events."

"We have quite stringent public health measures routes throughout Saskatchewan, lowered household bubbles and no large gatherings," Shahab said.