EDMONTON – The emergency in Alberta continues: 1,630 new cases of Covid-19 registered on Friday (and 14 deaths) detected on 15,857 tests, with a positive rate of around 10.52%. Active cases saw a slight drop from Thursday’s update; there are now 20,215 active cases in the province. Here is the territorial subdivision: Edmonton zone 5,080, Calgary zone 4,834, North zone 4,015, Central zone 3,995, South zone 2,273 (unknown zone 18). 

Currently there are 1,066 people admitted to hospitals, of which 263 in intensive care out of a total of 316 patients in ICU (the total intensive care beds available in Alberta are 374).

To the aid of Alberta, military medical personnel sent by the federal government will arrive tomorrow: it will start with eight intensive care nurses, to help the ICUs in the province. “Too few,” said Danielle Larivee, vice president of the United Nurses of Alberta. “We are grateful to the health workers who are arriving, but the staff is not enough. The people who will come will make a difference to the units in which they will be employed, but the fact remains that there is a raging fire that we need to figure out how to put out.”

Meanwhile, the calls for vaccination by the medical authorities continue. Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, posted on her Twitter profile on Friday (pictured above) “a summary of the latest #COVID19AB numbers: There are now 1,066 people in hospital due to COVID-19. Of the 803 non-ICU, 74.4% are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. Of the 263 in ICU, 90.1% are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated “.

Also on Friday, the Province announced that a Sherwood Park (Edmonton) woman, Hayley Hauck, won the $ 1 million grand prize in Alberta’s “vaccine lottery”. Hauck’s name was from the nearly 2 million subscribers who got vaccinated between June 10 and September 23. The lottery is now closed. It awarded three $ 1 million prizes and other prizes (coupons, travel, etc.) to Alberta residents who got vaccinated.

But Health Minister Jason Copping said “there are still $ 100 debit cards up for grabs,” in hopes that other residents in the hardest hit province by the fourth wave of the pandemic will convince themselves to get vaccinated. Currently, approximately 83.8% of the eligible population has received one dose of the vaccine, while 74.5% have had two. A percentage still too low, in a situation like that of Alberta. Will the lottery be enough?