WESTLOCK — The Westlock area has recorded one new COVID-19 cases since yesterday’s update, and one person has recovered.
There are 14 active cases of 168 recorded since the start of the pandemic. One person has died, a 90-year-old man at the Westlock Continuing Care Centre, and 153 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 99,453 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines as of yesterday. About 10,000 people have now been fully immunized with both doses.
This week, Canada won’t be receiving any shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as the plant in Belgium is upgrading its capacity. The federal government was advised that next week, they’ll see a 78 per cent reduction in shipments.
In Alberta, 362 new cases were reported today out of 7,200 tests for a positivity rate of five per cent. There are 9,337 active cases in the province.
Twenty-five more people have died, which brings the death toll in Alberta to 1,574. Hospitalizations sit at 637, with 113 of them in ICU.
Nine schools are on outbreak with five or more cases of COVID-19, and 259 are on alert with up to four cases. In total 11 per cent of schools across Alberta have 500 active cases, including three in Athabasca. In-school transmission has occurred in 51 schools, with 39 recording only one new case.
None of the Westlock area schools have two or more cases of COVID-19.
One UK variant case not linked to travel
This weekend, Alberta recorded the first non-travel related case of the COVID-19 variant first discovered in the United Kingdom. Tracers are still working to establish whether or not the person had any contact with a traveler.
“[This is a] potentially concerning development,” said Alberta’s chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw, since the variant does spread more rapidly than the baseline — about 30 to 50 per cent faster, said Health minister Tyler Shandro.
“There’s no question that these variants pose a serious threat to those who are most at risk.”
In order to prevent further spread, labs will be increasing genetic testing for the variants — Alberta Precision Labs is looking to fully sequence 400 samples per week by next week, Shandro said.
Those who enter the country under the border pilot program and get tested as they arrive will have to remain in isolation until a second negative test. If either test comes back positive, they’ll have to isolate for 14 days. All samples will be run through the variant testing.
In total, there are 20 cases of the United Kingdom variant in Alberta, and five of the South African variant.
Shandro presented a set of projections for the UK variant’s potential spread in the province if no measures were in place.
If there were 250 active cases, within six weeks Alberta could record 10,217 active cases per day (vs. 2,217 per day of the baseline virus); hospitalizations could go up to 3,611 within the same time frame (vs. 1,073 baseline) and ICU could see more than 800 admissions (vs. 200 baseline).
“There’s no question that this kind of exponential growth would push our healthcare system to the break. It would significantly impact the healthcare and the services available to all Albertans.”
He added the government is providing the numbers to “equip Albertans with facts, not fear.”
Caution when it comes to lifting measures
Shandro said he hopes an update on the public health measures will be coming in the next few days.
Until then, the measures will stay in place. Both Shandro and Dr. Hinshaw said the decrease in cases means Albertans are respecting measures and they are working.
Andreea Resmerita, TownandCountryToday.com
Watch Dr. Hinshaw's Jan. 25 COVID-19 update:
