By Chris Brown

159 new cases confirmed in past week

Medicine Hat in highest category for new COVID-19 case rate

Apr 6, 2022 | 4:07 PM

The province provided only its weekly update of COVID-19 numbers today with the regular media availability pushed back to Thursday.

Health Minister Jason Copping said the one-day delay is because chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw was giving testimony in court and therefore was unavailable.

As of March 23, the province is reporting the seven-day new case rate and the number of new cases in the last seven days for municipalities instead of reporting their active cases. Active cases are also no longer being reported province-wide.

Medicine Hat’s seven-day new case rate per 100,000 people is 233.4 on 159 new cases in the past seven days. The previous period’s rate was 148.3 and there were 101 new cases.

That places the city in the “highest” classification for seven-day case rate. There are four classifications – highest, high, medium and low.

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There have been 7,388 confirmed total cases in Medicine Hat and 91 deaths, two new in the past week.

With the province limiting testing in the fifth wave and since, these confirmed cases do not accurately reflect the number of cases in the community.

The most recent wastewater surveillance data for Medicine Hat, from April 4, shows the city’s weekly average of genomic copies (gc) per one millilitre (mL) of wastewater is 159.26. In the fifth wave it peaked at 266.2 on Jan. 31.

Among all Medicine Hat residents, 78.5 per cent have received one dose of vaccine, 74.9 per cent have received two doses and 35.3 per cent have received three doses.

A spokesperson for Alberta Health Services told CHAT News on Wednesday there are currently 84 COVID-19 positive inpatients in the South Zone with two of those in the ICU. There are 30 inpatients at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital with one COVID-19 positive patient in the ICU.

Chinook Regional Hospital has 40 inpatients with one in the ICU. Cardston Health Centre has five inpatients; Brooks Health Centre and Taber Health Centre have four each; and Raymond Health Centre has one.

There are now 990 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 44 of which are in ICU, and 4,104 deaths.

Alberta’s total cases from the start of the pandemic is 546,247.

There are 5,549 new cases confirmed in the province over the past seven days.

Again these are only the confirmed cases and do not accurately reflect the number of cases in the province.

Alberta has administered 8,603,560 doses of vaccine at the latest update.

In the last seven days, COVID was the primary or a contributing factor in 75 per cent of non-ICU hospitalizations and 72.8 per cent of ICU admissions.

Among current hospitalizations, 27.3 per cent are unvaccinated, 3.8 per cent have had one dose, 28 per cent have had two doses and 40.9 per cent have had three doses.

Among Alberta’s total population, 81.1 per cent have received at least one dose of vaccine and 76.6 per cent have received two doses 36.7 per cent have received three doses.

More detailed information is available on the province’s COVID-19 dashboard.