Premier Jason Kenney is to provide an update at 6:00pm today on the province’s COVID-19 strategy.
Kenney is facing increasing calls to act amid a fourth wave of the pandemic that has pushed intensive care cases beyond normal capacity and forced the cancellation of non-urgent surgeries.
Former United Conservative cabinet minister Leela Aheer is among critics who have been calling for Kenney to outline a plan to respond to the crisis.
Aheer says in a post on Twitter that the premier should also show some humility and admit he botched the fourth wave of COVID-19.
—
1,609 new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed during the past 24 hours in Alberta. About 15,800 (15,831) tests were conducted for a test positivity rate of approximately 10.2 percent.
There are 877 individuals hospitalized in Alberta due to COVID-19. The number of COVID patients in intensive care units is 218, which is another record high for the province.
24 new deaths have occurred. The number of lives lost due to the virus in Alberta is 2,495.
The number of active cases of COVID-19 is 18,395 – up by 26 from September 13th.
429 new variant cases have been identified.
There are 5,408 active cases of COVID-19 in the Edmonton Zone, 5,297 in the Calgary Zone, and 2,620 in the Central Zone.
Crossfield is up to 41 active cases of the virus. Sundre is up to 48, the Three Hills/Highway 21 area remains at 52, Sylvan Lake is down to 99, the Didsbury/Carstairs/South Mountain View County area is up to 104, Olds is down to 106, Innisfail is down to 113, and Rocky Mountain House is down to 209.
Red Deer County is down to 226 active cases of COVID-19, while Mountain View County is up to 151.
More than 252,000 (252,904) Albertans have recovered from the virus.
As of September 14th, over 5.6 million (5,674,732) doses of vaccine have been administered in Alberta. In Didsbury, 57 percent of people of all ages have been immunized with at least one dose, while 51.3 percent are fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, with classes just underway, some parts of Alberta with low vaccination rates are already experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks in schools.
There are four elementary schools in the Wild Rose School Division, two in Drayton Valley, and two in Rocky Mountain House being investigated for infectious outbreaks.
By population, Drayton Valley and Rocky Mountain House have some of the highest rates of COVID-19 in Alberta.
Current numbers show 47 per cent of eligible people in Drayton Valley and 50 per cent in Rocky Mountain House have had at least one vaccine shot.
The Alberta government is being accused of a failure of leadership for downloading COVID-19 health decisions on individual school boards.
The board of trustees for Red Deer Public Schools says in a letter to Education Minister Adriana LaGrange that the province has abdicated its responsibility to protect the health of students and families.
The board says that has caused and increased division and frustrations in communities across Alberta, which is having a negative effect on the teaching and learning of students.
The letter adds Red Deer Public Schools will make the best choices for its communities, even though the decisions should fall under provincial jurisdiction.
(Contains content from The Canadian Press)
Comments