Alberta’s Current COVID-19 Round-Up As Of Tuesday, April 20th

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Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney said he is happy with the way locals turned up for vaccination with AstraZeneca-Oxford, and specifically thanked those in the age group 40-55 for their great response.

He added that he had booked his own vaccine appointment for coming Thursday, while provincial chief medical officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw received hers on Tuesday.

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Alberta’s Health stated that at least 36000 people signed up for their vaccine appointment with the AHS last Tuesday to be immunized with the vaccine AstraZeneca. A further 25000 appointments are still available and can be accessed in the next two weeks at the AHS’ site. More appointments can be scheduled with registered pharmacies.

The immunization center that was previously located at Calgary has been shifted to Telus Convention Center. The AHS said that this center is much more spacious and can comfortably accommodate the number of people that they expect will access the immunization services.

As of last Tuesday, health officials have administered at least 1196428 vaccines, with 239277 having had their second doses.

The opposition’s Rachel Notley asked the Premier to collaborate with them to fast-track laws that would let people to get about three hours off their workplace, with pay, so that they can be immunized. The Premier responded noting that his government is open to the idea, and that he would reach out to the opposition on Wednesday once he has had talks with his team.

Currently, health officials are fending off hesitancy that was caused by recent reports of blood clots in persons who were immunized with the vaccine AstraZeneca, or Covishield. The risk of a blood clot is higher in people who have been infected with the virus compared to those who have received the jab, Dr. Hinshaw said.

So far, Alberta has reported 1345 new infections by Tuesday, with its positivity rate standing at 10.4%.

This brings its sum of active cases to 18,481. Of these active cases, Calgary accounts for up to 44% of them. Another area where the majority of these cases come from is Edmonton.

There has also been a considerable number of people who have recovered from the same. This figure currently stands at 153,000.

Unfortunately, it appears that there’s also an increment in the cases relating to the more severe and highly transmissible variants of COVID-19 in Alberta.

For the active COVID-19 cases in Alberta, 476 of the victims are hospitalized with 105 of these under intensive care.

As a result of the high infection rate, Fort McMurray public, Edmonton and Catholic schools have moved their students to online learning platforms for the next 14 days.

On Tuesday, the province of Alberta reported 816 new cases, which involve strange variants. This brought the total number of active variant cases to 10,520, which accounts for 56.9% of all the active cases.

So far, at least 8,026 patients have fully recovered from these foreign variants of the disease while another 57 have lost their lives to it.

The British Columbia government revealed that it would be introducing new regulations or limitations on Friday, as an attempt to curb the spread of the virus.

John Horganhe, the Premier of British Columbia, asked residents of either side of the Alberta-B.C border to brace themselves as these restrictions would be enforced throughout the Victoria Day weekend come next month.

By April, 6, the Alberta government had already reimplemented the Step 1 limitations which entail the closure of all restaurants and bars for in-person dining, prohibition of fitness programs that relate to low-intensity workouts, and reduction of retail store capacity to about 15%.

That said, it’s good to be aware of the specific areas that are being affected the most by the virus. These include Calgary Zone, whose cases stand at 8,098, Edmonton zone, which has reported 4,899 and North Zone with a total 2,543 cases. The South and Central zones have also been hit hard, accounting for 969, and 1900 cases respectively.