Alberta reports second highest number of active COVID-19 cases since pandemic began

Alberta reported 1,539 new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, raising the province’s active case count to 20,721. This is the second highest number of active cases that Alberta has seen since the onset of the pandemic.

Of the new cases, 812 were variants of concern, which is slightly less than Monday’s count. Alberta now has 13,091 active COVID-19 variant cases, representing over 63% of the province’s total active infections.

There are currently 635 people in hospital due to the virus, including 143 Albertans in intensive care.

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There were seven new deaths related to COVID-19 reported in the past 24 hours.

During a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, chief medical officer of health, told Albertans that throughout the pandemic, it has been important to ensure that the deaths reported represent those who died from COVID-19. This does not include those who died of another cause but happened to have COVID-19.

“In our initial counts, we include deaths where COVID-19 has been flagged as a possible cause, even if it remains unknown,” said Alberta’s top doctor. “In those cases, medical officials review the death certificate and files post mortum to determine if the virus was indeed a contributing cause.”

She went on to explain that, most often, these remain classified as COVID deaths; however, sometimes the review identifies that there was a different cause of death.

Because of this, Alberta’s COVID-19 death toll has been updated, and is now 2,067. There were 14 previously reported deaths that were found to not have COVID-19 as a contributing cause, which have now been removed from the province’s total.

Dr. Hinshaw will be providing her next live update about COVID-19 later this week.