By Chris Brown

Medicine Hat's seven-day case rate down

Hinshaw says to be mindful of COVID and Easter gatherings

Apr 13, 2022 | 4:33 PM

As Albertans head into their third Easter COVID weekend, Dr. Deena Hinshaw says people need to remember that indoor social gatherings create a higher risk of transmission of the virus.

“We also know that people gain benefit from spending time with people they care about and its important to be able to celebrate important holdiays with those of our family and friends,” said the chief medical officer of health in the weekly Wednesday update. “So what I would recommend is that people consider who they’re going to be gathering with, consider what precautions are appropriate for these individuals.”

She said it’s critical anyone feeling sick not attend a gathering, consider the use of rapid tests and having parts of gatherings outdoors if the weather is co-operative.

She was hesitant to say whether our province is going through a sixth wave of COVID-19. Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam indicated yesterday many locations nationwide are experiencing another wave.

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Of the two leading indicators the province is watching, PCR test positivity rate is stable, while wastewater virus levels are trending up, says Health Minister Jason Copping.

The most recent wastewater surveillance data for Medicine Hat, from April 11, shows the city’s weekly average of genomic copies (gc) per one millilitre (mL) of wastewater is 165.07. In the fifth wave it peaked at 266.2 on Jan. 31.

“We’re seeing more virus circulating in Alberta as in other provinces. This is not surprising given the transmissibility of BA.2 and the increase in contacts as people resume their normal routines,” he said.

There has not been a severe impact in terms of severe outcomes, Copping says, noting hospitalizations have only gone up slightly.

“We may see some further increase in the next few weeks but we are prepared for it. And at this time we do not expect the kind of impact we saw in the initial Omicron wave in December and in January.”

Copping said hospital occupancy is stable at around 90 per cent, and ICU admissions are within the normal base of 173 beds on most days in the past couple of weeks.

Copping said there’s no truth to rumours that the rapid test program at Alberta pharmacies is coming to an end. He said there remains ample supply for pharmacies and they can continue to request more as supply demands.

The province will also pause the use of Sotrovimab as a COVID treatment following uncertainty about its effectiveness against the BA.2 subvariant. That strain is currently the dominant one in Alberta, accounting for about 80 per cent of total new cases.

Medicine Hat’s seven-day new case rate per 100,000 people is 189.4 on 129 new cases in the past seven days. The previous period’s rate was 233.4 and there were 159 new cases.

The city is in the “high” classification for seven-day case rate, down from “highest” last week. There are four classifications – highest, high, medium and low.

There have been 7,511 confirmed total cases in Medicine Hat and 92 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..

Among all Medicine Hat residents, 78.5 per cent have received one dose of vaccine, 75 per cent have received two doses and 35.5 per cent have received three doses.

A spokesperson for Alberta Health Services told CHAT News on Wednesday there are currently 71 COVID-19 positive inpatients in the South Zone with two of those in the ICU. There are 24 inpatients at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital with one COVID-19 positive patient in the ICU.

Chinook Regional Hospital has 34 inpatients with one in the ICU. Taber Health Centre has five inpatients; Cardston Health Centre has four; Brooks Health Centre has two; Bow Island Health Centre and Raymond Health Centre have one each.

There are now 1,053 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 48 of which are in ICU, and 4,141 deaths.

Alberta’s total cases from the start of the pandemic is 552,403.

There are 6,181 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 8,621,854 doses of vaccine at the latest update.

In the last seven days, COVID was the primary or a contributing factor in 66.4 per cent of non-ICU hospitalizations and 75.9 per cent of ICU admissions.

Among current hospitalizations, 25 per cent are unvaccinated, 3.7 per cent have had one dose, 27.1 per cent have had two doses and 44.3 per cent have had three doses.

Among Alberta’s total population, 81.1 per cent have received at least one dose of vaccine and 76.7 per cent have received two doses 36.9 per cent have received three doses.

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