The COVID-19 update for Tuesday, February 9 provided encouraging numbers.

  • There were 195 new cases in the past 24 hours with just over 7,000 tests performed and a positivity rate of 3.2%.
  • There are 427 people in the hospital with 78 of those in ICU.
  • There are 315 active alerts in schools accounts for 13% of the schools in the province. There are a total of 866 cases in provincial schools.
  • There have been 104 cases of COVID-19 variants found.
  • There were 12 more deaths reported. The ninth person under the age of 30 has passed away in the province.
  • To date, 124,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered and 32,600 Albertans have been fully immunized with two doses. 
  • Cochrane is holding steady with six active cases.
  • Rocky View County dropped to 37 active cases. 
  • Stoney Emergency Management reported no new cases, eight recoveries, and 49 active cases. 

Doctor Hinshaw spoke to Albertan's concern over the variant count and says that it is important to keep the numbers in context. 

"I know there are concerns about one of these more contagious variants becoming the dominant strain in the province – this is a serious worry for me, too. However, I also think it is important to keep the new numbers that we report in context. It is important that Albertans understand what these numbers mean in terms of the spread we are seeing. For context, the first variant case in Alberta was identified retrospectively in a sample originally taken on Dec. 15 in a returning traveler. From that day to now, there have been 104 positive variant cases identified among all the samples that have been taken. At the same time, more than 43,000 cases of COVID-19 strain were detected in our province. This means that variant cases made up a quarter of a percent of all the cases identified from Dec. 15 onwards."