Alberta's COVID-19 death count up 20; hospital, ICU admissions increase

The COVID-19 test-positivity rate for Alberta has increased for a second straight week, while more people have been admitted to hospital and intensive care unit.

Alberta's total COVID-19 death count increased by 20 to 4,652 after the latest reporting week, provincial data shows.

The number of Albertans in hospital with COVID-19 increased to 559, including 23 ICU patients. There were 552 hospitalizations, including 16 people in ICU, a week ago.

The province's seven-day PCR test-positivity rate is 22.41 per cent, an increase of about 4.1 percentage points from a week ago.

Through those tests, 1,691 new COVID-19 cases were identified from July 12 to 18 — 330 fewer than the previous reporting week.

More virus is believed to be spreading throughout the community, however, because the data does not include positive rapid test results and few people are eligible for a PCR test, per the provincial government's eligibility rules.

Of all Albertans, including those who are ineligible, 77.4 per cent have received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine; 81.6 per cent have received at least one dose.

Only 38.5 per cent of the total population has received three doses.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, announced some changes Wednesday pertaining to how Alberta Health will display COVID-19 data on its dashboard.

It will now show a graph differentiating between the amount of people in hospital primarily due to COVID-19 and those who were admitted for non-COVID reasons but tested positive for the illness.

The health-care capacity tab will be removed from the dashboard, because Alberta Health Services provides the same information on its website.

Alberta Health will stop showing individual outbreaks, instead classifying the number of outbreaks by supportive living, long-term-care, acute-care and other.

The chart for vaccine outcomes will also be replaced by a summary of available evidence, as well as a list of peer-reviewed sources.

Hinshaw said the outcomes chart is being replaced because the transmissibility of the Omicron subvariant has made the data incomparable.

12 monkeypox cases in Alberta

There are 12 confirmed cases of monkeypox in Alberta, according to the health ministry. That's an increase of four from Hinshaw's last update July 4.

All cases are in the Edmonton and Calgary health zones.

Eight cases are in the Calgary zone, four are in the Edmonton zone.

There are 604 total confirmed cases throughout Canada as of 11 a.m. MT Wednesday, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada's website.