The COVID-19 update for Monday, February had Dr. Deena Hinshaw reporting some encouraging COVID-19 numbers.

  • There were 269 new cases reported in the past 24 hours with over 6,200 tests performed for a positivity rate of 4.3%.
  • Three are 432 people in the hospital with 76 of those in ICU.
  • There were five additional deaths reported for a total of 1,710.
  • There are active alerts in 313 schools or approximately 13%. There have been a combined total of 844 cases in schools since January 11. 
  • There were 25 additional cases of COVID-19 variants reported since Friday. There are 46 that are not currently linked to travel. 
  • Cochrane is reporting six active cases.
  • Rocky View County has a total of 43 active cases. 
  • Stoney Emergency Management is reporting one new case and 57 active cases. Everyone 65 and older who lives on the reserve can be vaccinated starting today (Monday, February 8). Appointments must be made in advance, call 403-881-3920. No drop-ins permitted.
  • To date, over 120,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered. More than 29,000 Albertans have been fully immunized with two doses.

Today marked the first day of Step One in the restrictions easements. Dr. Hinshaw says that it is too early to be talking about Step Two. 

"We deliberately built in a minimum of three weeks between steps to allow us to monitor our hospitalizations, as well as our positivity rate, new case numbers, and overall growth rate, to ensure that we’re not seeing a rise in transmission linked to activities that have been opened. This is especially important now that we have seen some cases of the more contagious variant strains in our province. We need to keep a close eye on these cases and take further action to prevent spread if we see these numbers grow. The reality of this pandemic is that there are very few risk-free ways to live with COVID-19 widely circulating in the province."