The Saskatchewan government says it is asking the federal government for help to deal with surging COVID-19 cases as it sends six intensive care patients to Ontario to relieve overwhelmed staff.

       Health officials said the first patient was to go to Ottawa on Monday and another five patients will be sent to Ontario by Wednesday.

       The province said it is paying for the transfers and will also pay to have one or two family members go with each patient.

       “This is being done to ensure they continue to receive the very best possible care that is available,” Premier Scott Moe told reporters Monday.

       “The current level of pressure on our ICU staff requires that a few patients be sent over to (Ontario) to relieve some of that current pressure that we have.”

       There were 124 people in the province’s intensive care units, which is about 157 per cent of normal capacity.

       Saskatchewan has been running out of hospital space and staff for several weeks. Elective and urgent surgeries have been cancelled, and the province has suspended its organ donation program.

       About 175 health-care workers have been redeployed to ICUs across the province.

       “Our teams are under significant strain and have been under those conditions for a number of weeks now,” said Derek Miller, executive director with the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

       “It is very stressful on our front-line teams to be able to support this level of surge for this length of time, and that’s a major factor in moving ahead.”

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       Marlon Pritchard, who is in charge of the province’s emergency operation’s centre, said the province reached out to health-care systems across North America asking if staff were available to come to Saskatchewan.

       “We made requests looking for those skilled individuals and, when those ended up not being able to provide the resources we were hoping for, we now reached out to the federal government this morning,” he said.

       Moe had previously rejected assistance from the federal government, which initially offered to help Saskatchewan with its fourth wave in late September. The premier said at the time that Ottawa would likely be able to provide enough staff for two ICU beds and the Saskatchewan government was being realistic about Ottawa’s finite resources.

       On Monday, however, he said he got that number based on “taking essentially per capita of what (the federal government) sent to Alberta.”

       Ottawa sent eight military critical care nurses to Edmonton earlier this month.

       Pritchard said it’s unknown how many critical care personnel Ottawa will be able to send Saskatchewan through both the Canadian Red Cross and the military.

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