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Red Deer active COVID-19 cases continue to fall, city adds 31st death

Alberta reported an additional 399 COVID-19 cases
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Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Wednesday that more than 309,000 doses of vaccine have been administered in Alberta. (Photo by Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta)

Red Deer’s active COVID-19 cases dropped to 161 Wednesday – a decline of 30 from the day before.

The city hit a record of 565 active cases late last month and cases have steadily trended downwards in March.

Alberta Health reported another death in Red Deer Wednesday, a woman in her 80s, who died on March 8. It was the 31st death in Red Deer since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There have been 1,928 deaths from COVID-19 in the province and 63 per cent of those have been in long-term care or supportive living facilities.

Alberta reported 399 additional cases over the past 24 hours, with a positivity rate of 3.7 per cent. The province has 4,463 active cases of COVID-19, with 130,382 recovered cases and 136,77 confirmed cases overall. There are 254 people in hospital, including 37 in intensive care.

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The Central zone sits at 440 active cases of the virus, with 31 people in hospital, including seven in intensive care.

Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said more than 309,000 doses of vaccine have been administered in Alberta.

She said close to 91,000 Albertans have been fully immunized with two doses. As vaccinations ramp up the province, Hinshaw cautioned Albertans that they still need to be careful about transmission of the virus.

“I know it can be tempting to let your guard down after immunizations, but we need to better understand the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing transmission, including asymptomatic and variant transmission before we can safely alter our policies,” Hinshaw said.

Hinshaw added that Alberta has now seen 734 cases of COVID-19 variants of concern, after the first variant was detected on Dec. 15. The Central zone has reported 130 cases of the U.K. variant to date.

When looking at the province’s geospatial mapping for COVID-19 cases on the municipality setting, regions are defined by metropolitan areas, cities, urban service areas, rural areas and towns with approximately 10,000 or more people; smaller regions are incorporated into the corresponding rural area.

With that setting, Red Deer County has 20 active cases of the virus, Lacombe County has 38 active and Clearwater County sits at 24 active.

Lacombe has 18 active and Sylvan Lake has 16 active cases, while Olds sits at nine active. Mountain View County sits at 24 active, Kneehill County has three active and Drumheller has 57 active.

Camrose County has no active cases and the County of Stettler has one.

Camrose has two active cases and Wetaskiwin has seven active.

In the local geographic area setting, Wetaskiwin County, including Maskwacis, has 36 active cases. Ponoka, including east Ponoka County, has 20 active.

Rimbey, including west Ponoka County and partial Lacombe County, has 19 active cases.

There are active alerts or outbreaks in 259 schools, which is about 11 per cent of schools in the province. These schools have a combined total 1,017 active cases.