WESTLOCK — Over the past three days, the Westlock area has recorded two more active cases of COVID-19.
The area includes Westlock County, the Town of Westlock and the Village of Clyde. In total, 65 people have tested positive since the start of the pandemic and 45 have recovered.
The other 20 cases are still active, for an active case rate of 146.3 per 100,000 people. The threshold for a community to be placed on an enhanced measures list by Alberta Health Services is 10 active cases and a positivity rate of 50 per 100,000 people.
Westlock has been on the AHS watch list since Oct. 21, when active cases rose to 13 of 21 recorded since March. At the start of November, all watch listed communities, Westlock included were placed on an enhanced measures list.
‘Our current situation is grim’
Alberta’s chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw said today that the COVID-19 situation in Alberta is “grim.” She announced 1,151 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours.
About 17,000 people were tested in that time span, for a 6.5 per cent positivity rate. They’ve identified a threshold of five per cent.
In total, there are 10,655 active cases across Alberta. Hospitalizations rose to 310, with 58 people in ICU.
“Severe outcomes are not limited just to those already at the very end of their lives and it is a mistake to think so,” Hinshaw said. Of those who need hospital care, one in four people have no pre-existing conditions, the same one in six of the people in ICU.
Others have very common conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes: “In Alberta, almost one quarter of all adults over the age of 20 have a chronic condition. That is almost 800,000 people,” Hinshaw said.
This week, two 30-year-olds died of COVID-19. Eleven more people died today, and the death toll rose to 462.
