By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

friday update

More than 1,500 new cases of COVID-19, nearly 700 of them variants

Apr 9, 2021 | 4:06 PM

Alberta added 674 new variant COVID-19 cases Friday, pushing the current active total of confirmed variant cases to 5,937.

Variants now make up 45.5 per cent of all active cases, which number 13,059, an increase of 872. They have caused 33 deaths.

Friday saw a total of 1,521 new cases added, for a pandemic total of 158,426. That yields a one-day positivity rate of ~9.7 per cent, with 15,630 tests completed in the last day.

Sadly, Alberta Health is also reporting two new deaths, giving the province a total of 2,007 since the pandemic began in March 2020.

The two fatalities occurred April 3 involving a female in her 50s in Edmonton Zone (linked to an outbreak at Covenant Health St. Joseph’s Hospital), and on April 7, involving a female in her 60s in Calgary Zone.

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There are now 333 Albertans in hospital due to COVID-19, down seven, including 83 in intensive care, the same as yesterday.

Alberta has administered 779,817 doses of COVID-19 vaccine as of April 7.

Locally, the number of active cases in Red Deer now sits at 216, an increase of four over the past 24 hours.

There have now been 3,036 recoveries, an increase of 18 as the total number of cases attributed to Red Deer rose by 22 to 3,286. Red Deer has sat on 34 deaths since March 23.

Active cases across Central Zone as of Friday

Red Deer County: 49 (+3)

Sylvan Lake: 28 (-4)

Lacombe County: 57 (+12)

City of Lacombe: 48 (+5)

Ponoka County: 182 (+7)

Clearwater County: 9 (–)

Brazeau County: 24 (+1)

Mountain View County: 40 (-1)

Olds: 33 (+4)

Kneehill County: 19 (–)

County of Stettler: 7 (–)

The Central Zone has 1,050 active cases, up 110 from Thursday. The zone has 28 people in hospital, down four, and eight in the ICU at Red Deer Regional, up one. The zone has had 123 deaths.

There have been 998 variant cases in Central Zone, all but four of which have been the B.1.1.7 version. The remainder are the P.1 variant. There are 570 active variant cases in the zone, and two people have died from a variant in the zone.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw will provide another live update early next week.

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