Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw is warning the province that if current case rates and hospitalizations continue to trend upward, more restrictions may have to be put in place.

“Hospitalizations are increasing province-wide and cases continue to rise sharply. My team is monitoring closely and if we do not see growth slowing soon. Further measures may be required,” said Hinshaw.

The doctor noted that a lot of spread has been occurring in school aged children.

“We are seeing a sharp rise in cases in school aged Albertans as well as those in all other age groups. While there are no risk-free options that have with COVID-19 the rise we’ve seen is not attributed to any single cause and in fact is often linked to social gatherings outside school rather than transmission within classrooms,” said Hinshaw.

Dr. Hinshaw expects that restrictions will be able to lifted in the summer months as long as Albertans take care to lower the rate of infection for the current third wave.

“We need to make sure that we don’t wait too long. We cannot wait three weeks and watch. We have to make sure that were watching within the coming week to ten days about what those cases look like and consider if our trajectory continues on a steep upward climb whether those additional measures will be needed,” said Hinshaw.

The doctor notes that every health zone in Alberta has seen a significant increase in cases recently. She encourages Albertans to follow the current the restrictions in place to fight the rising numbers.

Alberta reported 1,081 new cases on April 13 from 11,965 tests completed and our positivity rate is about 8.9%. Right now, 15,087 cases are active in the province.

There’s 402 people in the hospital with the virus, with 88 of these in intensive care. This is 12 more hospitalizations than reported yesterday, and two fewer ICU admissions.

Watch the full update here: