Dr. Deena Hinshaw to update Albertans on COVID-19
CBC
Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, will provide an update Thursday on the government's continued efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Hinshaw will speak at 3:30 p.m MT. Watch the news conference here.
Active cases and hospitalizations continue to decline but Alberta continues to lead the country in active cases by a wide margin.
As of Wednesday, there were 8,733 active cases in Alberta and 25,264 across the country.
Alberta reported 645 new cases Wednesday and 10 new deaths.
The new cases were detected through 11,343 tests with a positivity rate around 5.58 per cent — the lowest rate recorded since August.
There have now been 3,073 COVID-19 deaths in Alberta since the start of the pandemic.
As of Wednesday, there were 810 people in hospital with COVID-19, including 184 being treated in intensive care beds.
Provincially, ICU capacity — including additional surge beds — was at at 84 per cent. Without the additional surge spaces, provincial ICU capacity would be at 159 per cent.
Of the 184 patients in ICU, about 87.5 per cent are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.
As of Wednesday, more than 6,497,800 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Alberta.
More than 86.8 percent of eligible Albertans have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine while more than 79 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated.
At a time when Canada is vastly expanding its child-care system, and just eight months after a major E. coli outbreak in Calgary child-care centres, an Alberta Health Services analysis shows the province is lagging in its rate of daycare inspections, falling far short of its guideline of at least two inspections per year at each of the province's licensed daycare centres.