WESTLOCK — The Westlock area has recorded two new COVID-19 case since yesterday’s update, and four people have recovered.
There are 11 active cases of 162 recorded since the start of the pandemic. One person has died, a 90-year-old man at the Westlock Continuing Care Centre, and 150 others have recovered.
The area includes the Town of Westlock, Westlock County and the Village of Clyde.
The outbreak at the Continuing Care Centre is still ongoing.
The province has administered 95,243 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines as of yesterday. All residents and staff at the province’s 357 long-term care and designated supported living have received the first dose of the vaccine.
Some residents in mixed facilities will have to wait for their first dose of the vaccine because of the shortage. At Smithfield Lodge in Westlock, a mixed facility where some residents are long-term care, all healthcare workers and residents have been vaccinated.
Health minister Tyler Shandro said Tuesday that the province will focus on administering the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in light of the Pfizer-BioNTech shortage announced last week. Residents in long-term care are receiving priority for the second dose.
Canada will not be receiving any new doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine next week. The Belgian plant is undergoing upgrades that would increase its vaccine production.
This will likely delay the province’s plan to begin Phase 2 of first dose immunizations, currently scheduled for February. All seniors over the age of 75 are part of the next phase.
Alberta’s chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the province takes vaccine monitoring very seriously, from Canada’s “rigorous” testing and approval process to adverse effect monitoring. There have been 18 adverse reactions, including diarrhea, rash and vomiting. Six people have had allergic reactions and are seeing an allergist before receiving the second dose.
“I want Albertans to understand that we are watching closely and that the benefits of these vaccines far outweigh the risks,” Hinshaw said.
In Alberta, 669 new cases were reported today out of 14,900 tests for a positivity rate of 4.5 per cent. There are 10,565 active cases in the province.
Twenty-one more people have died which brings the death toll in Alberta to 1,484. Hospitalizations sit at 744, with 124 of them in ICU.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 far outweigh those for influenza, Hinshaw explained. More than 5,000 people have been in hospital since the pandemic began in March. Over the last 10 years, Hinshaw said, around 1,500 people were hospitalized for influenza annually.
There are 252 cases in schools across Alberta, 18 of them from in-school transmission. Two schools are on outbreak with five or more cases, and 167 on alert. None of the schools in the Westlock area have two or more COVID-19 cases.
