Red Deer down to 166 active COVID cases as Alberta reaches three-month low

55,270 Red Deerians have been immunized with at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine through Monday, including 15,955 who are fully vaccinated with two doses.

Elsewhere locally as of Tuesday (by municipality):

Red Deer County – 39 active cases (down four from Monday)

Sylvan Lake – 17 (-2)

Lacombe County – 18 (–)

Lacombe – 19 (-3)

Ponoka County – 72 (+1)

Brazeau County – 15 (+2)

Clearwater County – 58 (+4)

Mountain View County – 6 (-7)

Olds – 5 (-1)

Kneehill County – 4 (-2)

County of Stettler – 8 (–)

The Central Zone as a whole has 581 active cases as of Tuesday and 33 hospitalizations, including seven receiving intensive care at Red Deer Regional Hospital. The Central Zone has had 160 deaths linked to COVID-19, including one reported in the past 24 hours – a man in his 60s who passed away June 6.

Across Alberta another 139 cases of COVID-19 were announced Monday out of 3,443 test results for a positivity rate of just over four per cent.

Active cases across the province are down to 4,431, a one-day decrease of 276.

There are 336 Albertans hospitalized due to the virus, down 15, including 85 in intensive care, down nine.

Three new deaths linked to COVID-19 were reported in the past day to bring the province’s total to 2,251.

As of June 7, 3,123,226 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Alberta. Two-thirds (67%) percent of the province’s eligible population aged 12 has received at least one dose, and 15.1 per cent of eligible Albertans (573,211) are now fully vaccinated with two doses.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Tuesday that the growing immunization program and the public health restrictions are working as planned to limit transmission in Alberta.

She said the immunization program continues to administer more doses each day and the number of people who have received two doses is rising sharply.

“The other good news is that our leading indicators continue to trend downward,” said Hinshaw, noting the province’s number of active cases is the lowest since March 9. “That’s over 20,000 fewer active cases than we had just one month ago.

“What’s more our positivity rate has averaged 4.5 per cent over the last seven days. That’s a sharp drop from the average of 11. 7 in early May. Most importantly Alberta’s average positivity rate is declining in all zones, which indicates that progress is being made province-wide.”

Responding to concerns about the B.1.617.2 delta variant, Hinshaw said it’s not new to the province and was first identified here in a sample taken April 8. Since then 197 cases of the variant have been identified in Alberta. The majority are most likely the substrain B.1.617.2, she said.

There are 16 cases identified in patients on two units at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre and four health-care workers have tested positive. Hinshaw says they are two separate outbreaks and all but one case was hospital-acquired.

She said spread is being watched, and cautioned that of all variants of concern identified last week only five per cent were the B.1.617 strain.

“Research is still emerging for this variant with respect to vaccine effectiveness,” said Hinshaw. “Current evidence seems to show that first doses are somewhat less effective. They still appear to provide some protection and the good news is that two doses are virtually as effective against B.1.617 as any other strain.”

She said that underlines the effectiveness of second doses and they are looking at speeding up the administration of second doses.

(With file from Chris Brown – CHAT News Today)

by Troy Gillard

Red Deer down to 166 active COVID cases as Alberta reaches three-month low

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