One new case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Red Deer over the past three days.
The provincial government’s reporting application was down Wednesday and Thursday due to a technical issue, so the exact location of new cases was temporarily unknown.
Twenty-three of Red Deer’s 33 confirmed cases have recovered. Red Deer County has 12 confirmed cases, two of which are active.
The City of Lacombe has two recovered cases, while the County of Lacombe has four recovered. Stettler County has three active cases and one recovered.
Clearwater County has one recovered case, Mountain View County has five recovered cases and Ponoka County has one recovered case.
On Friday, the government announced 239 new cases of COVID-19 in Alberta, bringing the provincial total to 2,397.
Premier Jason Kenney and Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, announced the latest statistics at the provincial government’s daily press conference.
Of the total cases, 1,124 have recovered – 92,805 tests have been completed. The death total is still 50.
The central zone has 77 total active and recovered cases. The Calgary zone has 1,673, the Edmonton zone has 429, the north zone has 135, the south zone has 68 and the location of 15 cases is unknown.
There are currently 60 hospitalizations, 13 of which were ICU admissions, due to COVID-19.
“The most encouraging news in Alberta is our consistently low rate of hospitalizations and ICU admissions resulting from COVID-19,” said Kenney.
“The hospitalization total is up by about 10, and that is something to remind us that we’re far from being out of the woods on this and the numbers can change very quickly.
“However we continue to see far fewer hospitalizations than even the most optimistic scenario described by the AHS modelling, which we released last week.”
The government is also working to expand testing at continuing care facilities experiencing an outbreak. Workers and residents will be tested regardless of whether they have symptoms.
“This expanded testing does not replace or change any of our outbreak measures, and a negative test in someone with no symptoms does not change the need to be isolated for 14 days if they are a close contact of a confirmed case,” said Hinshaw.
“What it does is gives us a better chance of early identification of new cases. Given that we now know people who may be infected with COVID-19 can potentially spread the illness before they show symptoms, testing more residents and staff in continuing care facilities will help us prevent further infections and deaths.”
Hinshaw said this would be most useful at the beginning of an outbreak.
There are no COVID-19 press conferences scheduled for Saturday or Sunday, but the latest statistics will be released online.
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