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COVID-19: Sharp increase in active cases in central zone Tuesday

The numbers are from the long weekend
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Since Friday, central zone saw an increase in active cases by 55 per cent.

Alberta confirmed 961 COVID-19 cases Tuesday. The numbers from the long weekend are: 236 on Friday, 259 on Saturday, 246 on Sunday and 220 on Monday.

Central zone’s 50 active cases on Friday jumped to 109 Tuesday. The number of people in hospital in the local zone remained steady at three.

To date, the zone has had 668 recoveries – an increase of eight since Friday.

Despite the sharp increase in active cases in the local zone, it has the lowest active cases compared to other zones in the province.

As of Tuesday, there were 22 active cases in the City of Red Deer – an increase of 12 since Friday. To date, 110 people in the city have recovered.

Red Deer County was at four active cases Tuesday, two in Sylvan Lake, seven in Lacombe County, 10 in City of Lacombe, 36 in Ponoka County, two in City of Wetaskiwin, two in Town of Olds, eight in Mountain View County and eight in Stettler County.

There are no active cases in Clearwater County and Wetaskiwin County.

There are 2,615 active cases in Alberta with ninety-seven people in hospitals.

There have been four deaths in the province since the chief medical officer’s last anouncement on Thursday. None of them were in central zone.

In total, 70 intensive care unit beds have been dedicated to COVID-19. Currently 13 are in use, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the chief medical officer of health confirmed Tuesday.

“We’re watching our province’s health system carefully to ensure hospitalizations and ICU admissions remain within our province’s capacity,” said Hinshaw.

There are no people in the intensive care units in the central zone.

Hinshaw said the province is making a shift in its testing approach. Starting Wednesday, the province will move to appointment-only approach to testing at AHS assessment centres.

Drop-in testing is a small part of the testing currently being done, said Hinshaw, with 93 per cent of all testing is done through appointments.

Assessment centres are seeing a high no-show rate lately said Hinshaw. For example, Calgary saw a 14 per cent no-show rate this weekend.

The Edmonton zone remains the hotspot in the province with 1,444 active cases in the zone Tuesday.

The active cases in Calgary zone was at 754.

There are active alerts or outbreaks in 209 schools – that’s about 9 per cent of all schools in the province.

These schools have 464 active cases in total. This number includes 88 schools that are on outbreaks including 21 currently on province’s watchlist.

Most of these schools are located in the City of Edmonton and Calgary, according to the province’s school map.



mamta.lulla@reddeeradvocate.com

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