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Central zone down to 16 active COVID-19 cases

Alberta Health Services’ central zone is down to 16
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The provincial government identified 153 new COVID-19 cases on Friday. (File photo by The Canadian Press)

Both the City of Red Deer and Alberta Health Services’ central zone experienced a slight decrease in active COVID-19 cases on Friday.

Red Deer now has six active cases, which is one fewer than Thursday, according to the latest statistics available on the provincial government’s website. There are 102 who have recovered from the virus in the city.

Meanwhile, the central zone currently has 16 active cases, which is three fewer than reported in Thursday’s update.

Red Deer County has two active cases, while Sylvan Lake, Olds, Wetaskiwin and Lacombe County have one each. Ponoka County has four active cases and Mountain View County has eight.

The provincial government identified 153 new cases on Friday. In Alberta, there are 1,497 active cases, 15,585 recovered cases and 261 people who have died due to the virus. A total of 1,269,261 tests have been conducted in Alberta.

Currently, there are 56 people in hospital due to COVID-19, with 14 of those individuals in intensive care. The central zone has no hospitalizations.

Five Alberta schools are on the government’s watch list – four in Edmonton and one in Calgary. A school outbreak with five or more cases, where the virus could have been acquired or transmitted in the school, is put on the watch list.

Edmonton has the most active cases among all AHS zones, with 786. Calgary has 518 active cases, the north zone has 129, the south zone has 41 and seven are located in an unknown area.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said Canada has entered the second wave of COVID-19.

In a recent update, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said it is possible additional restrictions could eventually be put in place for highly impacted areas.

“We have not yet to date had an area move into an enhanced category, but that enhanced category is for areas where if we do see a particular issue in a particular geographic location, then we may need to impose certain additional measures in that location,” said Hinshaw.

“We have, of course, seen some areas that have gone up and down in their rates, but we haven’t needed to impose additional restrictions.

“That framework does allow us to be more targeted if we should need to consider additional restrictions, to look at what our data is telling us both at a geographic level, but also at the level of activities.”

The government will next update Albertans on COVID-19 statistics on Monday.



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