Alberta Health announced Wednesday that the province has identified 206 new COVID-19 cases since the day before. However, there have been no new coronavirus deaths in that time frame and the number of people with the disease who are in ICUs remained unchanged at 23.
The number of people in Alberta hospitals wth the illness was at 97 on Wednesday afternoon, up slightly from 90 a day before.
There are currently 2,282 active COVID-19 cases. The Calgary zone has more than any other region with 1,292, the Edmonton zone has 416, the South zone has 230, the North zone has 202, the Central zone has 139 and there are three cases that have not been linked to a particular zone.
Alberta’s positivity rate was at 3.83 per cent on Wednesday. So far, just over 76.1 per cent of eligible Albertans 12 and older have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine while 66 per cent of eligible Albertans have been fully vaccinated.
READ MORE: COVID-19: Edmonton physicians urge Alberta government to test, trace, isolate
Since last week’s announcement by Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw that people with COVID-19 will soon no longer be required to isolate and that the province will significantly scale back its testing, there have been consecutive days of large protests against the policy shift in both Calgary and Edmonton.
While Hinshaw has said the new approach of moving from a pandemic response to an endemic response is an effort to redeploy resources used on COVID-19 to other pressing health issues, many doctors and medical experts have raised concerns about the move, especially as many believe Alberta is entering a fourth wave of the pandemic.
READ MORE: Hinshaw apologizes for causing ‘fear or anger’ over Alberta’s plan to lift COVID-19 measures
On Wednesday, Hinshaw released an op-ed to several media outlets in which she reiterated the reasons she is changing the province’s approach, but also apologized for causing “confusion, fear or anger” with her announcement.