UPDATE: As of Wednesday, the northeast Edmonton region had been removed from the “watch” category.
Northeast Edmonton and Clear Hills County have been classified as “watch” regions on Alberta Health’s relaunch status map.
The map shows the level of risk in regions and information about local health measures. It also shows the rate of COVID-19 infections and the number of active cases.
“To help prevent local outbreaks and help you make informed decisions, you can view a relaunch map to see where active case rates are at in different municipalities in the province,” Dr. Deena Hinshaw explained June 15.
“If a local municipal district has 50 active cases per 100,000 population with at least 10 active cases, we move it into the watch category,” Alberta’s chief medical officer of health said.
As of Monday, the northeast Edmonton district — outlined in the map below — had 45 active cases in a population of 88,901. The area’s active case rate per 100,000 was 50.6.
“It’s important to remember that this list is simply an indicator that health officials need to take a closer look at what is going on,” Hinshaw stressed at a news conference Tuesday.
“At this time, there are no additional measures that are needed.”
Hinshaw the vast majority of the 45 active cases are linked to known outbreaks or close contacts of a known case.
“At this time, there’s no evidence that there’s widespread transmission in that community from unknown sources.”
Hinshaw said any additional measures that might need to be taken would be made in consultation with Alberta Health Services, municipal officials and public health teams.
“Any kind of measures that would be considered would be based on that local epidemiology based on where we see transmission happening and whether or not additional measures are needed to control the spread,” she explained.
“Additional measures would only be put in place if they were needed based on the specifics of a situation in terms of where the spread was happening in that particular location.”
Clear Hills County, region in northwestern Alberta, had 10 active cases in a population of 2,998. Its rate of active cases per 100,000 was 333.6.
Alberta Health will work with local public health officials in areas under the watch category “to see if we need to implement additional measures to prevent spread,” Hinshaw said. “It is important to remember that this threshold of 50 active cases per 100,000 population is simply one point on a spectrum of local risk.
“While this metric helps provide transparency to the process of determining any need for extra local measures, in areas below that threshold, we still need to continue our precautions.”
Hinshaw said Alberta’s main metrics continue to be rates of hospitalization and ICU admissions.
In terms of additional measures, “gathering restrictions” and “public health orders” were listed for Northeast Edmonton and Clear Hills County, however, the measures didn’t appear to differ from the restrictions under Phase 2 for the rest of Alberta.