By Shane Clausing

COVID update

Grande Prairie adds two new COVID-19 cases over the weekend as Alberta adds 418

Sep 14, 2020 | 4:18 PM

The Province of Alberta confirmed 418 new cases of COVID-19 from September 11 to September 13. There are now 1,538 active cases of COVID-19 in the province.

Grande Prairie added two new cases over the weekend and saw three recoveries, leaving 11 active cases in the city.

The QE II hospital also remained at two active cases over the weekend, after an outbreak was announced by Alberta Health on Friday. COVID-19 outbreaks are declared once there are two or more active cases at a facility.

One new case of COVID-19 was added in both the County of Grande Prairie and MD of Greenview. Five active cases are located in the County and just one active case in the MD of Greenview.

One more death from COVID-19 was confirmed, bringing the provincial death toll to 254.

Updated numbers in the Peace Region are as follows for September 13:

• City of Grande Prairie: 95 cases (11 actives, 82 recovered, two deaths)
• County of Grande Prairie: 49 cases (five actives, 44 recovered)
• M.D. of Greenview: 13 cases (one active, 11 recovered, one death)
• Birch Hills County: Three cases (All recovered)
• M.D. of Spirit River: 11 cases (eight actives, three recovered)
• M.D. of Smoky River: 74 cases (zero actives, 64 recovered, ten deaths)
• Big Lakes County: 48 cases (zero actives, 43 recovered, five deaths)
• M.D. of Lesser Slave River: 11 cases (four actives, seven recovered)
• M.D. of Peace: 24 cases (10 actives, 14 recovered)
• M.D. of Fairview: 16 cases (two actives, 14 recovered)
• Clear Hills County: 78 cases (15 actives, 62 recovered, one death)
• Northern Sunrise County: Nine cases (3 actives, 6 recovered)
• County of Northern Lights: 45 cases (26 actives, 19 recovered)
• Saddle Hills County: One case (One active, 0 recovered)
• Mackenzie County: 381 cases (65 actives, 304 recovered, 12 deaths)

Over the weekend, hospitalizations across the province dropped from 41 to 37. One more person was admitted to the ICU, which grew from six patients to seven.

In the North Zone there are currently five people in the hospital, none of which are in an ICU.

Over the weekend, Alberta Health completed 46,127 tests, including a record of 18,919 on Saturday, September 12 after a backlog was found.

Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw she says while there were close to 19,000 tests completed on Saturday, we likely won’t need to conduct that many tests per day, as that expanded testing capacity is for if there is a surge in influenza and COVID-19 cases.

“There’s a difference between surge capacity being able to test a certain number of people in a single day and the requirements to test that many people every single day for months and months.”

“As the lab has demonstrated, we have that surge capacity that we committed to having, but we do not need to maintain that capacity every single day. We need to focus on moving our highest priority samples through as quickly as possible. Those who are symptomatic, those who are in close contact of cases, those who are in outbreaks and if our case numbers should increase and we see should see more symptomatic individuals we absolutely need to be able to surge to that. But the intention has never been to have that kind of a sustained capacity every day.”

Alberta has completed 1,130,828 COVID-19 tests.