For the first time in months, the County of Barrhead is officially free of active COVID-19 cases that have been identified by the province.
According to the geospatial map that lists COVID-19 cases in municipalities across Alberta, the County of Barrhead had zero active cases as of Jan. 25. (Incidentally, the total number of cases in the county sits at 51, with 49 recoveries and two deaths.)
Other municipalities adjacent to the County of Barrhead are not so lucky. Woodlands County is listed as having three active cases and three recoveries for a total of six, while the Town of Whitecourt has 25 active cases, 107 recoveries and one death.
To the south, Lac Ste. Anne County has 66 active cases on top of 340 recoveries and 11 deaths.
Chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw reported on Jan. 25 that a total of 362 new cases had been identified over the past 24 hours.
Overall, there are 637 Albertans in hospital due to the virus, as well as 113 Albertans in ICU.
Sadly, there have been 25 new deaths reported over the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 1,574.
Hinshaw thanked the many Albertans who are following the public health orders, noting that they are the reason the province is seeing progress in terms of case numbers of hospitalizations.
However, Health Minister Tyler Shandro spent much of the Jan. 25 update warning Albertans about the more infectious variants of COVID-19 that had appeared in the province.
Twenty cases of the variant first seen in the UK had been identified in Alberta, along with five cases of the variant first identified in South Africa.
The majority were linked to international travel, but one case of the UK variant is apparently connected to community transmission.
“This means it may have entered the broader community,” said Shandro. “This is very concerning.”
Shandro noted that the infection rates of these variants may be 30 to 50 per cent higher than the original COVID-19 strain. In Ontario, the identification of a variant at a long-term care facility has led to 200 active cases and more than 30 deaths in just a few weeks.
Without any measures in place to slow the spread of the virus, “there’s no question that this kind of exponential growth would push our health care system to the brink,” Shandro said.
After announcing some changes to testing and the rules around isolation for international travelers, Shandro stressed the need for Alberta and Canada to acquire more doses of vaccine.
“We need more doses now, and we need them more urgently due to the increased threat posed by the new variants,” he said.
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