By Chris Brown

Shandro: We need vaccines

39 active COVID-19 cases in Medicine Hat, 5,000th recovery in South Zone

Jan 15, 2021 | 4:10 PM

Health Minister Tyler Shandro called Alberta a model for the rest of Canada for its COVID-19 vaccination rollout and said federal problems with vaccine procurement are hampering the province’s efforts.

“We need vaccines,” Shandro said. “That is the bottleneck that we are facing as we work to ramp up both the number of doses that are administered and the groups that we include in the vaccine distribution.”

On Friday, federal Procurement Minister Anita Anand says production issues in Europe will temporarily reduce Pfizer-BioNTech’s ability to deliver vaccines to Canada.

There are 39 active cases of COVID-19 in Medicine Hat on Friday.

The city now has had 512 total cases – the 39 active, 462 recovered and there have been 11 deaths.

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There are five new cases in the city in Friday’s update and four recoveries.

Across the province, there are 12,189 active cases, down 245 from Thursday, and 101,779 recovered cases, up 1,017.

Alberta’s total number of COVID-19 cases from the start of the pandemic is 115,370.

There are 785 new cases in the province today.

There are now 796 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 124 of which are in ICU, and 1,402 deaths.

The province completed 13,575 tests in the past 24 hours.

The provincial positivity rate is 5.8 per cent.

As of Jan. 14, 74,110 doses of vaccine have been administered in Alberta.

Shandro said shipments are expected to continue in the coming weeks but the number of doses will be fewer.

By the end of March, Shandro said, Pfizer believes it will be on track for Alberta to receive the total committed doses for the first quarter of the year.

With global demand high, Shandro said, “next week, the amount of vaccine that Canada receives will be reduced by about 20 per cent.”

He said the number of trays of vaccine received will be reduced by 80 per cent next week and in the two weeks that follow only half of the expected doses will be in Canada.

He said they are waiting for details from the federal government on how Alberta’s allocation will be affected.

“This is out of our control but it will impact Alberta’s immunization schedule,” said Shandro. “As a result of fewer doses of vaccine coming into our province, it will take longer to complete immunization of the priority health-care workers who are currently part of phase 1.”

It will also delayed planned immunization of other in the high-priority category, the health minister said.

Shandro added health officials will continue to give out as many doses as possible as quickly as possible. He expects that by Monday all residents and staff in long-term care and designated supportive living facilities will be vaccinated.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw’s next in-person update will be on Monday.

Medicine Hat and the entire province remains in enhanced status, in which risk levels require enhanced public health measures to control the spread and are informed by local context.

Medicine Hat remains on the provincial “Watch” list.

Regions are placed on the province’s “Watch” list when they have a rate of more than 50 active cases per 100,000 population. Medicine Hat’s 39 active cases among 68,057 people puts it at a rate of 57.3.

Brooks (51.8 rate), The County of Newell (71.4), Lethbridge (133.4) Lethbridge County (134.8) and the MD of Taber (58.3) are also on the list.

Cypress County and the County of Forty Mile are no longer on the “Watch” list.

There are 5,449 cases in the South Zone. There are 383 active cases and 5,000 recovered. The death total in the zone is at 66.

An AHS spokesperson told CHAT News on Thursday that AHS South Zone currently has 26 COVID-19 positive individuals in hospital. There are eight at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital, with three of those in the ICU. Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge has 18 inpatients, with three of those in the ICU.

School outbreaks will begin to be reported again this week following the return to in-person classes on Monday.

The website Support Our Students is tracking instances of cases in schools across the province.

Cypress County has totaled 144 cases – three active cases and the rest recovered.

The County of Forty Mile has 116 total cases. There are two active cases, 112 recovered and there have been two deaths.

The MD of Taber has 323 total cases — 11 active cases, 306 recovered and there have been six deaths.

Special Areas No. 2 has 40 total cases – five active, 34 recovered and there has been one death.

Brooks has 1,361 total cases — 10 active and 1,337 are recovered. Brooks has recorded 14 deaths.

The County of Newell has a total of 147 cases — six active cases, 139 recovered and there have been two deaths.

The County of Warner has 152 total cases. There are nine active cases, 141 are recovered cases and there have been two deaths in the county.

The City of Lethbridge has a total of 1,558 cases. There are 132 active cases, 1,416 recovered and there have been 10 deaths. Lethbridge County has 472 cases, 34 active cases, 431 recovered and there have been seven deaths.

The figures on alberta.ca are “up-to-date as of end of day Jan. 14, 2021.”

Saskatchewan confirmed 382 new cases of COVID-19 in the Friday update.

Saskatchewan has a total of 19,715 cases, 4,010 considered active. There are 15,495 recovered cases and there have been 210 COVID-19 deaths in the province.

Saskatchewan has delivered 11,985 doses of vaccine.