Alberta reported 162 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Thursday, bringing the provincial total to 2,158.
“We did expect to see higher one-day case numbers as we expanded our testing,” Dr. Deena Hinshaw said.
Alberta’s chief medical officer of health said two more people died from the virus: a man in his 70s in the Calgary zone and a woman in her 80s in the North zone. Both were residents of long-term care centres.
One was living at the High River Long Term Care unit. The other was at the Manoir du Lac centre in McLennan, where 38 cases (both staff and residents) have been confirmed, and five deaths.
“We must never forget that every case is a person,” Hinshaw said. “Every death is a tragedy.”
Alberta has seen a total of 50 fatalities connected to the virus.
READ MORE: Alberta expands testing to anyone with COVID-19 symptoms
Hinshaw also said 2,779 tests were completed over the last 24 hours.
She explained a power failure at the data centre started a small fire which brought down the Alberta Health reporting system, causing a service disruption. She said teams are working around the clock to restore the system and hope to have all the data posting regularly to the website Friday.
Outbreaks at Kearl Lake and Cargill
She also spoke about two outbreaks: the Kearl Lake Oilsands Project north of Fort McMurray and the Cargill meat processing plant in High River.
Hinshaw said AHS continues to work closely with the companies to implement outbreak procedures and limit the spread.
She announced three confirmed COVID-19 cases at the oilsands site Wednesday, although the company, Imperial, said only one employee had tested positive.
Hinshaw clarified Thursday that of the three confirmed cases, one was on site and the two others had left the site.
“We had seen those three cases be diagnosed at around the same time… with potentially a common exposure,” she explained.
“The company does have the additional information about the confirmed cases that linked back to the site,” she said, adding it is taking appropriate follow-up action with all three.
Later Thursday, Imperial said it has “two active COVID-19 cases on site, and 10 active cases away from site.
“We are taking this situation very seriously. We have completed contact tracing for all of these individuals and have asked additional members of our workforce to self-isolate while further testing is underway.
“We continue to coordinate closely with Alberta Health Services (AHS) as we manage this issue.”
In regards to the outbreak at the Cargill meat processing plant in High River, Hinshaw said “all appropriate measures are being taken,” and the company is “fully complying” with all public health measures.
She added that the company has increased physical distancing and slowed down the lines at the facility.
In the High River area, 164 cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed, but Hinshaw said not all of them are linked to the Cargill plant.
“It’s a community outbreak, where some of the cases certainly were connected to the Cargill plant, but many were connected to large households.”
She said it is a complex outbreak, with multiple factors, that AHS is working hard to contain. The controls being activated include a lot of testing and extensive contact tracing.
Resumption protocol at food-processing facilities
An “intergovernmental business resumption protocol” for provincially or federally licensed food processing facilities in Alberta has been established.
The province said the principles of the protocol were applied at Cargill Beef when the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed there on April 6, and that it has “proven effective” even before being formally signed by all parties.
“Food production is an essential service,” said Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen. “The employees in Alberta’s food processing industry are still hard at work every day, and thanks to them our food supply chain is strong. This new plan we’ve developed will help keep them safe – while they keep us fed during the pandemic.”
Opposition Leader Rachel Notley said the NDP is concerned about the working conditions at food processing plants.
“We are deeply concerned that hundreds of workers at a High River-area meat processing plant have been laid off or had their hours cut substantially for exercising their legal right to speak out about unsafe work conditions.
“The minister of labour and minister of agriculture and forestry have a duty to ensure these workers are safe. To date, there have been 38 confirmed COVID-19 cases — that we know of — at the Cargill plant and yet it remains open.
“We’re also told by the minister of agriculture that he has worked with unions on a coronavirus protocol plan but we spoke to the province’s largest food sector union – UFCW – and they have heard nothing from the minister.
“We are told the conditions are Cargill are very concerning, given COVID-19, with 2,000 workers coming in and out of the plant daily and working nearly shoulder to shoulder.”
Foothills Medical Centre maternity ward
Seven staff in the maternity ward at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Hinshaw said.
She added health officials took “immediate action,” no patients tested positive and no new staff cases occurred in the last week.
Hinshaw stressed there is no increased risk to patients at the maternity ward.
Demand for testing
Since expanding testing eligibility to anyone in Alberta with COVID-19 symptoms, AHS has seen a significant spike in referrals for tests.
On Wednesday, there were about 5,000 referrals for swabs and just over 3,000 swabs done at assessment centres Wednesday – that number doesn’t include tests done at hospitals or through contact surveillance.
“So that’s people who either went onto the Alberta Health Services online assessment portal or called 811,” Hinshaw said.
“It seems to be taking a little while for those people to work through the system, go to the assessment centres to get the testing and have that swab run at the lab.”
Given the wider testing eligibility, AHS is expecting case numbers to go up throughout the week.
“And we expect that we’ll be able to use those numbers to dig into the details.”
Due to the fire and system failure, Hinshaw and the epidemiology team hasn’t been able to do more in-depth analysis yet.
“Our hospitalizations numbers – those are numbers that aren’t going to be changing based on our testing criteria, and those have continued to be relatively stable. And we will … hopefully by next week, be able to start producing our graphs of those hospitalization trends.
“And those are on the low end. They’re lower than our modelling predicted.”
“We need a little more time with that expanded testing to watch the trends and understand where the risk areas are for transmission,” Hinshaw said.