Alberta's slightly lower daily COVID-19 case count still isn't low enough: Hinshaw

Alberta recorded another 644 coronavirus cases Monday, and although that’s less than Saturday’s record-breaking 919 new cases, it’s still too high a number for Dr. Deena Hinshaw.

“We expect some variation from day to day, but we have not yet turned the corner that we must turn,” she said at a news conference Monday afternoon.

She added rising hospitalizations are “extremely concerning,” and cautioned Albertans that she may not wait a full two-week incubation period to implement tighter restrictions. Right now there are 192 people in hospital, including 39 in intensive care.

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Residents in Calgary and Edmonton are already being asked to not invite others into their homes that don’t live there, but Hinshaw warned further measures could be on the way if new daily cases and reproduction values don’t come down.

Hinshaw wants both Calgary and Edmonton to see fewer than 100 cases per day, respectively. She also wants to see cases, on average, spawn only one new infection. Right now the “R value,” a number which indicates how many people each infected person passes the virus to, hovers around 1.1.

“We’re giving Albertans every opportunity to walk along with us and to be part of the solution before we implement restrictions,” she said.