This story is a collaboration between the Investigative Journalism Foundation and CBC Saskatchewan.

Newly obtained internal data shows the Saskatchewan government knew COVID-19 was spreading at an “exponential” rate in the fall of 2021, providing new insight into what officials knew before a devastating COVID-19 wave hit the province.

The Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) and the CBC have obtained a six-page briefing presented to top officials at Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health in September 2021, days before the provincial government publicly declined to re-introduce measures doctors said were urgently needed to stop the spread of the virus.

The presentation, dated Sept. 3, 2021, came before a wave of COVID-19 infections that killed hundreds and nearly overwhelmed the province’s health system.

The government would later have to airlift roughly a quarter of its most critically sick patients to Ontario because there were not enough doctors and medical staff to care for them in Saskatchewan.