One month after relaxing restrictions on private indoor gatherings, the Saskatchewan government tightened them back up on Tuesday province-wide with worship ceremonies being limited to a maximum of 30 people as of Friday.

Provincial health minister Paul Merriman was under the gun as he answered questions on the decisions that were made with him being asked if the government had made a mistake in loosening the restrictions in the first place seeing cases have exploded once again with variants of concern becoming a bigger issue provincewide day-by-day.

Merriman says the decision was made because of the information in front of them at the time.

“We made that decision with what we had at that moment. We were confident with the compliance in that,” Merriman said. “The variant throws everyone in the country and the world a bit of a curveball.”

Merriman added this move was one they would have liked to avoid, but it is something that needs to be done for a few weeks more until more people can be vaccinated.

On Tuesday, the government announced another 7,800 vaccines had been delivered across the province bringing the provincial total to almost 300,000

NDP health critic Vicki Mowat continues to say tighter measures are needed to reduce the high number of cases we are seeing.

“Many parts of Saskatchewan have far higher case counts than Regina did when this government applied the current restrictions to the city, yet today’s measures are not as diligent as those originally applied to Regina.”  Mowat said. This lack of consistency is causing confusion across the province,

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