South Zone still sitting well above 50 COVID cases/100K threshold

The South zone has the lowest number of active cases of COVID in the province at 383, but it also has the smallest population.

According to Alberta Health Service’s community report for 2020, the South zone has a population of 308,924 spread over a region that includes, Lethbridge, Brooks, Medicine Hat and Cypress County. The central zone has a population of 482,349, the north zone 484,941, Edmonton 1,424,837 and Calgary 1,696,765.

The metric used by the province to determine transmission rates is the positive cases per 100,000 people, which means that the South zone is sitting at 123.9 cases per 100,000, up from 84.81 a week ago when the region sat at 262 cases.

While the South zone’s transmission rate is still lower than the four other regions in the province — Calgary (274.5/100K), Edmonton (305.6), Central (239.4) and the North (334.9) — the figure Alberta Health and the province have been using to determine restrictions has been whether it reaches 50/100K or above.

According to data released Friday by Alberta Health, the south zone has had a total of 5,449 positive cases of COVID since the start of the pandemic, with 5,000 of those now listed as recovered. Based on the population that means 1.76 per cent of the people in this zone have tested positive to date.

Friday’s report says that 27 people were in hospital with COVID, with six in ICU. Alberta Health has said in the past that not everyone is necessarily hospitalized in the zone in which they live, and there is no word on whether anyone is currently in hospital in the South from out of zone.

There have been 66 COVID-19 deaths in the South Zone, which is 1.2 per cent of those who tested positive.