WESTLOCK — Active COVID-19 cases have dropped below 10 in the Westlock area for the first time since October 2020.
No new cases have been recorded since Friday. There are nine active cases in the area of 170 recorded since the start of the pandemic. One person has died, a 90-year-old man at the Westlock Continuing Care Centre, and 160 others have recovered.
The area includes the Town of Westlock, Westlock County and the Village of Clyde.
In Alberta, 355 new cases were reported today out of about 7,300 tests for a positivity rate of 4.9 per cent. There are 7,387 active cases in the province.
Fifty-one cases of the COVID-19 variants first identified in the UK and South Africa have been reported to date.
There are 556 people in hospital, including 102 in ICU. Ten people have died since yesterday, which brings the death toll in the province to 1,649.
Twelve per cent, or 298 Albertan schools are on alert or outbreak with a total of 701 cases. None of the schools in the Westlock area have two or more cases.
The average daily cases in school aged populations continues to drop, said Dr. Hinshaw. The week before school started, on average 131 kids tested positive for COVID-19 per day. That average has dropped to 71 kids last week.
The province has administered 106,347 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines as of yesterday. Of those, 16,209 people have received both doses.
Measures will be relaxed starting Monday.
“While our cases and hospitalizations are trending down, we still have work to do. We have reached a place where we should be able to ease restrictions on Feb. 8, but we have seen cases fall and rise before,” said Alberta's chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
Restaurants, bars, pubs and gyms will be allowed to reopen in a limited capacity. The new plan for easing restrictions is based on number of hospitalizations and staggers activities and businesses that can reopen.
Andreea Resmerita, TownandCountryToday.com
Watch Dr. Hinshaw's Feb. 1 COVID-19 update:
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