Copping says ‘current wave is receding,’ province scaling back COVID-19 updates

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the average PCR test positivity rate for the past week was 17.5 per cent.

She also said two new variants – BA.4 and BA.5 – are being discovered around the world. She says the new variants are more transmissible than previous ones but appear not to cause more severe illness. The first case has been identified in Alberta.

Hinshaw said it’s not surprising to see new variants and subvariants emerge but that the “tools that have long-served us well will continue to help reduce our risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 and limit community transmission.”

The health minister also shared information on a new product that will help prevent COVID-19 in immunocompromised people who don’t get adequate protection from vaccination.

Evusheld will be offered to people who have solid organ or cell transplants or blood cancer or who are being treated with specific immunocompromising drugs, he said.

Full details on eligibility and administration are available on the Alberta Health Services website.

Live updates will be provided every two weeks going forward, with the next update on the week of June 6.

Medicine Hat’s COVID seven-day new case rate per 100,000 people is 116 on 79 new cases in the past seven days. The previous period’s rate was 74.9 and there were 51 new cases.

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

There have been 7,984 confirmed total cases in Medicine Hat and 98 deaths, one new this 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 May 19 wastewater data for Medicine Hat shows the city’s weekly average of genomic copies (gc) per one millilitre (mL) of wastewater is 29.01. It’s steadily been dropping from 215.87 on April 14.

Among all Medicine Hat residents, 78.7 per cent have received one dose of vaccine, 75.2 per cent have received two doses and 36.3 per cent have received three doses.

A spokesperson for Alberta Health Services told CHAT News on Wednesday there are currently 55 COVID-19 positive inpatients in the South Zone with two of those in the ICU. There are 17 inpatients at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital with no COVID-19 positive patients in the ICU.

Chinook Regional Hospital has 26 inpatients with two in the ICU. Crowsnest Pass Health Centre and Pincher Creek Health Centre have two inpatients each; Brooks Health Centre and Cardston Health Centre have two each; and Big Country Hospital and Raymond Health Centre have one each.

There are now 1,040 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 31 of which are in ICU, and 4,507 deaths. Fifty-five Albertans have died from COVID in the past week.

Alberta’s total cases from the start of the pandemic is 580,881.

There are 2,737 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 8,825,042 doses of vaccine at the latest update.

In the last seven days, COVID was the primary or a contributing factor in 63.8 per cent of non-ICU hospitalizations and 70.6 per cent of ICU admissions.

Among current hospitalizations, 18.5 per cent are unvaccinated, 3.2 per cent have had one dose, 26.4 per cent have had two doses and 51.9 per cent have had three doses.

Among Alberta’s total population, 81.4 per cent have received at least one dose of vaccine and 77.1 per cent have received two doses 37.9 per cent have received three doses.

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

by Chris Brown

Copping says ‘current wave is receding,’ province scaling back COVID-19 updates

Our Community