Alberta’s COVID-19 hospitalization numbers continued to slowly decline Wednesday with 1,087 people in hospital with the virus.
Of that number, 78 people were receiving care in the ICU.
That’s compared to 1,106 people with COVID-19 in hospital — with 77 in the ICU — on Tuesday.
Over the past 24 hours, seven additional COVID-19 deaths have been reported to the province, bringing Alberta’s pandemic death toll to 3,986.
During the same time frame, the province identified 552 new lab-confirmed cases from 3,069 tests. That puts the province’s positivity rate at 17.69 per cent.
There were 6,878 active cases in the province as of Wednesday’s report.
As access to PCR testing is limited, officials have said both the number of new cases and active cases is likely much higher. At one point during the pandemic’s fifth wave, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the true number of cases was likely 10 times higher than what is being reported.
When asked for an updated estimate of how many cases of COVID-19 are actually currently being detected, Hinshaw told reporters Tuesday that she did not have the information needed to provide that at the time.
Global News has followed up with Alberta Health to get that information.
To date, 529,736 Albertans have been confirmed to have had COVID-19, while 518,872 recovered.