Alberta sees biggest jump in COVID-19 cases with 117 on Wednesday, two dead
Alberta’s biggest jump in COVID-19 cases happened on Wednesday with 117 new cases were confirmed for a total of 871 total in the province.
Two people have died from the virus in the past 24 hours, now claiming 11 lives in Alberta.
Premier Jason Kenney said the jump was due to Alberta Health Services processing a large backlog of nearly 4500 cases because of a temporary shortage of reagents in testing equipment, which has been resolved.
There remain four cases in the Bonnyville area and two cases in the Cold Lake area and just one additional case was confirmed on Wednesday in the North Zone, which extends just north of Edmonton to the provincial border.
Two cases are in the Vermilion River County area.
There have been 62 hospitalizations and 20 people are in intensive care.
Ninety-four cases could be due to community spread.
Forty-one cases are in continuing care facilities.
The number of recovered cases has improved as well, with 142 people seeing symptoms resolve.
Kenney said this has been the “toughest week” so far of the pandemic and added that things will get worse before they get better.
The province has completed over 50,000 coronavirus tests.
Alberta Health Services will come out with their modelling of the virus in the days to come.
- Calgary Zone: 527 cases
- Edmonton Zone: 219 cases
- Central Zone: 57 cases
- North Zone: 51 cases
- South Zone: 12 cases
- Unknown: 5 cases
Childcare expanded to essential service workers
The government is expanding eligibility for select licensed child care centres to provide child care for all essential service workers.
In addition to the previously eligible front-line health-care workers, critical infrastructure workers and first responders, child care is now available to anyone who works in the critical areas outlined as essential by government.
A full list of those essential service positions can be found here.
Parents who work in these areas can contact the child care centres that are open in their communities.
An updated list of these centres can be found at alberta.ca/COVID19 (under Info for Albertans). This list will be updated as new centres become available.
Currently, there are no child care centres that have reopened in the Lakeland area.
Those are in Calgary, Edmonton, Devon, Fort McMurray, Fort Saskatchewan, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer and Stony Plain.
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