Alberta added more than 2,000 COVID-19 cases on Thursday, setting a new daily pandemic record.
The province reported an additional 2,048 cases of the virus, after conducting 20,682 tests, for a positivity rate of 10.1 per cent.
Red Deer jumped to 722 active cases, after reporting 712 Wednesday. The city now has 678 active cases per 100,000 people.
Alberta sits with 21,385 active cases in total. There are 632 people in hospital with COVID-19 province-wide, with 151 in intensive care. The province reported 1,329 new variant of concern cases with variants making up 63 per cent of Alberta’s active cases.
“The bottom line is that our health system has the capacity and we can take steps to increase it, but the strain is growing,” Alberta chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Thursday.
“That is why we must bend down the curve as quickly as possible.”
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There were also three new deaths Thursday and to date 2,075 people have died from COVID-19.
The Central zone has 2,395 active cases of the virus, with 55 people in hospital, including seven in intensive care.
When looking at the province’s geospatial mapping for COVID-19 cases on the municipality setting, regions are defined by metropolitan areas, cities, urban service areas, rural areas and towns with approximately 10,000 or more people; smaller regions are incorporated into the corresponding rural area.
With that setting, Red Deer County has 176 active cases of the virus as of Tuesday, Lacombe County has 133 active and Clearwater County sits at 73 active.
Lacombe has 157 active and Sylvan Lake has 94 active cases, while Olds sits at 107 active. Mountain View County sits at 95 active, Kneehill County has 43 active and Drumheller has 21 active.
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Camrose County sits at 65 active cases and the County of Stettler has 71.
Camrose is at 132 active cases and Wetaskiwin has 86 active.
On the local geographic area setting, Wetaskiwin County, including Maskwacis has 164 active. Ponoka, including East Ponoka County, has 96 active cases and Rimbey, which includes West Ponoka County and parts of Lacombe County has 41 active.
About 31 per cent of schools across the province are on alert or have outbreaks, with 4,651 cases in total.
Of these, 443 schools on alert, with 958 total cases. Outbreaks have been declared in 307 schools, with a total of 3,693 cases.
In-school transmission has likely occurred in 615 schools. Of these, 234 have had one new case occur as a result.
As of Wednesday, more than 1.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Alberta and 292,765 Albertans are fully vaccinated with two doses.
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