By Chris Brown

Medicine Hat at 34 active cases

No restrictions eased, no timeline for future easing

Jan 21, 2021 | 4:22 PM

Dashing the hopes and expectations of the many Albertans, there was no announcement of lifting public health restrictions during today’s COVID-19 update from the province.

Even though the positivity rate, hospitalizations and number of active cases has declined over the past week, Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Alberta is not in the clear just yet.

“That is why no additional measures are being eased at this time. There are no changes being announced today,” the chief medical officer of health said.

With Medicine Hat and the surrounding areas well below 50 active cases for most of the new year, small business owners in the area and regular citizens alike have been pushing for a regional approach to lifting restrictions.

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Hinshaw said she understands the impact the restrictions have on people’s health and employment with respect to activities which support people’s health and the decisions are not taken lightly.

“What is important though is that COVID-19 cannot be restricted to a specific municipality and what we have seen certainly over the fall is how interconnected we all are and the movement between different towns, movement between large urban centres and small rural areas, that all of that movement is part of what spreads COVID-19,” Hinshaw said.

She said hospitalizations have gone up across the entire South Zone in recent days and emphasized the health system is a provincial one.

“We do need to monitor that and make sure that we have enough capacity before we start opening up. Because the worst thing would be that all of the sacrifices that have been made over the past several weeks, we would be squandering those by opening so quickly that our transmission rates would rebound when we have a baseline of over 700 people in hospital and that’s exactly what we need to avoid.”

Hinshaw said they are watching hospitalizations and ICU numbers particularly for guidance on when more restrictions can be lifted, but offered no timeline for when that could happen.

There are 34 active cases of COVID-19 in Medicine Hat on Thursday.

The city now has had 522 total cases – the 34 active, 476 recovered and there have been 12 deaths.

There are two new cases in the city in Thursday’s update and two new recoveries.

Across the province, there are 10,256 active cases, down 309 from Wednesday, and 107,358 recovered cases, up 971.

Alberta’s total number of COVID-19 cases from the start of the pandemic is 119,114.

There are 678 new cases in the province today.

There are now 726 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 119 of which are in ICU, and 1,500 deaths.

The province completed 14,060 tests in the past 24 hours.

The provincial positivity rate is 4.8 per cent.

As of Jan. 20, 96,506 doses of vaccine have been administered in Alberta.

Hinshaw said the declining number provimce-wide show we are on a positive trend.

“Our numbers indicate that the restrictions we put in place last month, while extremely challenging, are helping to prevent more people from being exposed and getting sick with this virus.”

On schools, she said there are 178 schools currently on “Alert” and four on “Outbreak.” there are 282 total cases in schools.

“When we look at daily new cases in school-age populations, this week are seeing an average of 80 new cases a day, significantly lower than the average of 140 new cases a day in the same population the week before school started.”

She added supporting students so they can be in class provides a great benefit to our society and to our children, and it underscores the need to keep reducing community transmission to protect our schools.

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 34 active cases among 68,057 people puts it at a rate of 50.

The County of Newell (98.9), the MD of Taber (53) Lethbridge (133.4) and Lethbridge County (118.9) are also on the list.

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

There are 5,616 cases in the South Zone. There are 405 active cases and 5,109 recovered. The death total in the zone is at 68.

An AHS spokesperson told CHAT News on Thursday that AHS South Zone currently has 27 COVID-19 positive individuals in hospital. There are seven at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital, with three of those in the ICU. Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge has 17 inpatients, with three of those in the ICU. The Pincher Creek Health Centre has two inpatients, and the Cardston Health Centre has one.

Seven Persons School is on “Alert” status, with two positive cases. One was confirmed on Jan. 17 and one on Jan. 15. Students and staff have been identified as close contacts and placed into quarantine.

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

Cypress County has totaled 145 cases – three active cases and the rest recovered.

The County of Forty Mile has 117 total cases. There are two active cases, 113 recovered and there have been two deaths.

The MD of Taber has 328 total cases — 10 active cases, 312 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 1,363 total cases — seven active and 1,342 are recovered. Brooks has recorded 14 deaths.

The County of Newell has a total of 153 cases — eight active cases, 143 recovered and there have been two deaths.

The County of Warner has 156 total cases. There are nine active cases, 145 are recovered cases and there have been two deaths in the county.

The City of Lethbridge has a total of 1,607 cases. There are 132 active cases, 1,464 recovered and there have been 11 deaths. Lethbridge County has 495 cases, 30 active cases, 458 recovered and there have been seven deaths.

The figures on alberta.ca are “up-to-date as of end of day Jan. 20, 2021.”

Read the full Jan. 21 update from the province here.

Saskatchewan confirmed 227 new cases of COVID-19 in the Thursday update.

Saskatchewan has a total of 21,338 cases, 3,099 considered active. There are 18,000 recovered cases and there have been 242 COVID-19 deaths in the province.

Saskatchewan has delivered 29,781 doses of vaccine.