There are 15 new cases of COVID-19 found in Saskatchewan, according to the province’s daily release Thursday, with 14 of them coming from Hutterite colonies in the RM of Maple Creek in the southwest part of the province.

This brings the total number of COVID-19 cases up to 708 in the province, with 59 of them currently active.

The province said contact tracing is being done on the cases, which began with two members of a rural household in the area testing positive last week. The other new case is in the far north.

There have been a total of 636 recoveries and 13 deaths so far in the pandemic.

There are two people in hospital with COVID-19, and one of those people is in ICU in Saskatoon.

Of the 59 currently active cases, 28 are in the far north, one is in the north, 13 are in Saskatoon, and 15 are in the south region. There are still no active cases in the central region or the Regina region.

Of the 684 provincial cases overall, 148 are travel-related, 418 are community contacts or mass gatherings, 90 have no known exposures and 52 are under investigation by public health.

Fifty-three of the cases are health care workers, and the province says the infections may not be because of their health care in all instances.

A total of 184 of the cases are from the Saskatoon area, 80 are from the Regina area, 112 are from the north, 285 are from the far north, 33 are from the south and 12 are from the central region.

One hundred and five of the cases are of people 19 and younger, and 140 are in the 60-and-older range. Of all of the cases, 51 per cent are in female patients and 49 per cent are male.

Thusfar, 57,836  tests have been performed in Saskatchewan. According to the latest numbers, there has been a rate of 43,532 tests per one million people, compared to the national average of 59,977 tests per million.

Nationally as of Thursday afternoon, there have been over 100,100 confirmed cases and almost 8,300 deaths from COVID-19. There have also been over 62,400 recoveries. The United States has had over 2.25 million cases with over 120,000 deaths.