Why has Alberta reported only three COVID-19 recoveries?

As the number of British Columbians who have recovered from COVID -19 surges over 100, Alberta’s official tally of those who have recovered remains stalled at three — the same number as when the province announced its first confirmed recoveries Friday.

According to Alberta chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw, more Albertans have likely recovered, but officially confirming this is labour-intensive and requires the use of testing resources.

“Part of the reason that our number is still at three officially is because we recognize that using our lab tests to determine if someone has recovered from the virus is not a good use,” Hinshaw said.

“We have a certain number of lab tests we can use and we felt that was not a very good use of those tests.”

For a person with COVID -19 to be considered to have recovered, they must have two consecutive negative tests conducted more than 24 hours apart, according to Alberta Health.

Hinshaw says there is evidence that those with mild COVID-19 symptoms won’t be able to transmit the virus to others 10 days after their initial symptoms appear, indicating a recovery, though not one that can be officially reported.

With the province now conducting about 3,000 tests each day, it’s more valuable to identify new cases than to update the status of existing ones, Hinshaw added.

“As you can imagine, with the number of new cases we’re getting every day, local health teams are incredibly busy and their priority is really following up on those individuals who are new cases, determining close contacts and putting self-isolation in place around those people,” she said.

The province is developing new administrative processes to report recoveries that will be rolled out shortly, Hinshaw said.

There are now 419 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Alberta after the province announced 61 new cases Wednesday.

Thirty-nine of those cases were initially reported more than 10 days ago.

Hinshaw has said that it is not clear whether it is possible to contract the coronavirus a second time, though evidence indicates that the virus eventually dies and is no longer able to cause infection.

As of Wednesday, British Columbia reports 183 recoveries — or 28 per cent of its total cases — from COVID -19, while Ontario and Quebec report eight and one recoveries, respectively.

More than 113,000 people globally have recovered from COVID -19, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University.