The province Friday (January 31) raised it's emergency response protocols to Level Two following the World Health Organization's declaration on Thursday that the novel coronavirus is a public health emergency of global concern.

Level Two is simply to ease communication between agencies to ensure a quick response if one is needed. Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw says nothing has really changed in Alberta and the risk to people remains low. "This isn’t a measure we’re taking because the risk has changed," Hinshaw said. "There's a lot of attention on this – we need to make sure our communication is coordinated."

Yesterday Alberta revealed that 18 people in the province have been tested for coronavirus but none have been positive for the illness. The fourth Canadian to test positive for corona is a 20-year-old woman from Toronto. Three of the confirmed cases are in Ontario and one is in B.C. Both provinces have airports that have flights that arrive directly from China and all four cases have been travel related.

More than 200 people have died so far, all of them in China where the disease originated.

The worldwide concern over novel corona has made some people forget that it is still influenza season in Canada and Hinshaw said that Albertans should be more concerned about getting the flu. "We know that influenza is currently circulating out in the community, so it would be very likely that you could be out in public, being in contact with people who have influenza."

According to Alberta Health Services data released Thursday, another person in the North Zone succumbed to the illness this week, bringing to 20 the number of Albertans that have died in the season.

70 new laboratory-confirmed cases of the flu requiring hospitalization were reported in the province in the last seven days for a total of 857. 307 have been in the Calgary Zone that includes Airdrie, a rise of just four cases in the past week. Comparatively, in the Edmonton Zone, there have been 351 cases of the flu that have required hospitalization, 42 of them in the last week.

So far this season there have been 4,783 lab-confirmed cases of influenza with 1,949 of them in the Calgary Zone.

You can view the latest 2019/2020 Influenza Season stats here.