Athabasca area now at 18 active COVID cases

ATHABASCA - There are now 18 active COVID-19 cases within the borders of Athabasca County, along with 18 recoveries, for a total of 36 since March.

Three active cases were added to the region's tally overnight which includes the county, the Town of Athabasca and the Village of Boyle. Two days ago, Nov. 23, the Alberta government's geospatial map reported 15 active cases and 16 recoveries.

One of those new cases was reported in the Boyle area, which has now reached 10 active cases and 17 recovered.  The Boyle and District Chamber of Commerce also announced today it was cancelling its Moonlight Madness events that were scheduled to take place Dec. 4.

The entire area within the county has been on the province's enhanced status list since Nov. 22, when it reached 10 active cases and a rate of 50 per 100,000 residents. Currently, with a population of 13,196 between the three municipalities, the active case rate per 100,000 sits at 136.4.

Recently passed temporary face-covering bylaws in the town and county were also activated the day of the status change from open to enhanced. Additional measures from the province were then announced Nov. 24 for all of Alberta, as a public health emergency was declared by premier Jason Kenney, who also noted the new mandatory measures would be reevaluated Dec. 15.

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw has been giving updates every day this week as the active case numbers rise and more and more measures are put in place. Today, she announced the province has reached the 500 death mark after adding nine more deaths in the last day. She also reported 1,265 new active cases provincewide — 82 per cent of the 13,719 currently active cases are in the Edmonton and Calgary health zones.

There are 355 individuals currently in hospital due to the virus and 71 of them are in intensive care units, Hinshaw said, adding Alberta Health Services aims to create 2,000 more acute-care beds and 400 ICU beds to deal with increasing numbers.

"In some cases, these will be new beds," she said. "In other cases, these beds are existing hospital spaces that will be made available as patients are moved into continuing care beds in the community."

As a result, patients will be moved from acute care beds to continuing care beds, and others will be moved to open beds around the province, Hinshaw said.

"I want to make sure that the health-care workers who are currently working incredibly hard, and to whom I am deeply grateful, know that the measures that are being put in place, that were put in place yesterday, and any additional recommendations we make based on watching our trends, will be made to minimize the chance that we will ever need to use those maximum numbers of beds."