The city of Red Deer is down to four active COVID-19 cases.
According to geospatial mapping available on the government’s website, 32 of the city’s 36 confirmed cases have recovered, which is one more recovery compared to Tuesday.
Provincially, there are 70 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Alberta, bringing the total to 5,963.
Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, announced the latest statistics at the provincial government’s daily press conference Wednesday afternoon.
The total number of new cases “is less than we had been seeing over the last week. We are watching that closely and some of that does relate to testing campaigns that are being done in different settings, particularly in outbreak settings,” said Hinshaw.
The shrinking number of new cases can be taken “cautiously as good news,” said Hinshaw.
“But I think we’re still watching really closely, because we know that depending on the setting, even a few cases can spread quickly to others if there are groups gathered together where prevention measures are not being taken.”
The government is “closely monitoring” indicators, such as the number of new cases and the amount of people in hospital and ICU, to determine if introducing the opening measures of the provincial relaunch strategy’s first stage is appropriate for next week, Hinshaw added.
Currently, there are 82 people in hospital due to COVID-19, with 19 of those admitted into intensive care units.
The death toll has increased by six, bringing the provincial total to 112 – none of these new deaths were located within the central zone.
Of the total cases in Alberta, 3,552 have recovered.
Many other central Alberta communities have seen no change in COVID-19 statistics when compared to Tuesday.
Red Deer County has 13 cases: two active and 11 recovered. The City of Lacombe has two recovered cases and Lacombe County has three recovered cases.
Ponoka County has two recovered cases, Clearwater County has one active and two recovered cases and Stettler County has three recovered cases.
sean.mcintosh@reddeeradvocate.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter