Province has administered half a million tests
Forty-six new cases and one new death reported as testing continues to expand
Alberta has now completed more than half a million tests for the novel coronavirus.
The milestone was hit Wednesday as the province reported it had completed more than 6,800 COVID-19 tests since Tuesday, bringing Alberta’s total to 500,203.
The mark comes as Alberta reports 46 new cases and one new death — a man in his 80s from the Alberta Health Services south zone who is not linked to a continuing-care centre. His death brings Alberta’s toll from the coronavirus to 158.
Over the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic, testing for the deadly virus in Alberta has outpaced the rest of Canada.
Though the province has now completed more than 500,000 tests, some people have been tested multiple times. A total of 435,847 people have received a COVID-19 test — about one in every 10 Albertans.
By comparison, about one in every 12.5 Canadians has been tested for the coronavirus.
Some provinces lag even farther behind. In British Columbia, only about one in every 29 people has been tested.
Alberta announced in late June that COVID-19 testing would expand to community pharmacies for those who are asymptomatic and have not had any known contact with the virus.
Twenty pharmacies, mostly in Calgary and Edmonton, are now offering testing, but Alberta Health says locations aren’t being publicly released so as not to overwhelm the testing sites.
Instead, the province encouraged Albertans to contact their local pharmacy to see if the service is available there.
As of Friday, 145 asymptomatic tests from participating pharmacies had been processed by Alberta labs.
The expansion to pharmacies is expected to bring Alberta’s testing capacity to about 16,000 tests per day. In the first week of July, Alberta averaged about 6,000 daily tests. Over that time, the proportion of tests that have returned positive has hovered at about one per cent.
The 46 new cases announced Wednesday bring Alberta’s total to 8,482, with 7,659 recoveries.
Of those cases, 608 remain active, down from 620 active cases Tuesday. The AHS Edmonton zone is home to the highest number of active cases, with 232, just ahead of the Calgary zone’s 230 active cases.
As of Wednesday, 55 Albertans were hospitalized with COVID -19, seven of whom were in intensive-care units — a slight increase in both metrics from Tuesday.
In Edmonton, the Misericordia Hospital has effectively shut its doors to the public after a COVID -19 outbreak at the facility has left three dead and infected 35.
Alberta has seen little change in its day-over-day coronavirus tallies over the past week, with between 30 and 64 new cases reported each day.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in an address to Canadians on Wednesday morning that numbers are levelling off across Canada, but cautioned against complacency.
“The situation is stabilizing in Canada because Canadians did their part and followed public-health instructions,” Trudeau said.
“But we still have to be very careful. Things can change quickly … . We still have some hot spots in some parts of the country, including in long-term care facilities and agricultural work settings.”
The same day, the federal government indicated that total government spending in 2021 would climb to $612 billion, partly as a result of high demand for the Liberal government’s two largest COVID -19 relief plans, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
The projected spending represents nearly double the $346 billion spent in 2019 and will bring the federal deficit for 2020–21 to an estimated $343.2 billion.