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Hinshaw stays mum on details of COVID-19 meeting with Alberta cabinet

Last Updated Nov 25, 2020 at 4:20 pm MDT

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw providing provincial update on Mar. 31, 2020. (Screenshot taken from CityNews live stream)

Alberta reported 34 new cases and 14 recoveries of COVID-19 in Wood Buffalo in the last 24 hours.

All are in Fort McMurray, which has 178 active cases, two deaths, and 480 recovered cases of the infection.

There are 26 active cases and 73 resolved cases of COVID-19 outside the urban service area.

This comes after Premier Jason Kenney announced new restrictions to help reduce the spread of the illness in Alberta.

READ MORE: 20 new COVID-19 cases in RMWB as Alberta announces new restrictions

Despite the new rules, some including Alberta Opposition Leader Rachel Notley said they don’t go far enough.

READ MORE: Restrictions don’t go far enough, says Notley

Alberta reports 1265 new cases and eight additional deaths linked to COVID-19.

The COVID-19 death toll in the province stands at 500.

The positivity rate for the latest round of testing for 15,600 swabs is 8.1 per cent.

COVID-19 recommendations and ICU capacity

Dr Deena Hinshaw, chief medical health officer, answered questions about her Nov. 24 meeting with the Alberta cabinet.

The meeting preceded Premier Kenney’s announcement of new restrictions.

Hinshaw did not detail which recommendations to the cabinet were not accepted.

She said the province will continue monitoring for patterns during the next three weeks under the new restrictions.

There were also questions about AHS and available ICU beds.

To date, 355 Albertans are in hospital with COVID-19, including 71 in intensive care.

Hinshaw previously mentioned Alberta has 70 ICU beds.

When asked about this figure, she said that number changed in recent days, but did not have an exact number of ICU beds currently available.

Hinshaw added AHS will provide more than 2000 acute care beds and 400 ICU beds in the near future.

348 or 15 per cent of Alberta schools have alerts or outbreaks of COVID-19.

179 have outbreaks, including 71 on the province’s watch list.

Father Mercredi and Holy Trinity are two schools within the RMWB linked to outbreaks.

No schools in the region are on the watch list.

Alberta has 13,719 active cases, 500 deaths, and 36,582 resolved cases of COVID-19.

Hinshaw will provide another update on Nov. 26, 2020.