Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Alberta reported about 241 COVID-19 cases a day.

On Friday, 236 cases were found from more than 16,000 tests, 269 cases were found on Saturday from more than 13,800 tests, on Sunday, almost 16,700 tests were completed and found 246 cases, and on Monday 220 new cases were found from over 11,000 tests. Overall, 961 cases were found from over 58,000 tests.

In Grande Prairie, 12 new cases were found, and five people recovered. There are 41 active cases and 103 recoveries. The city is now the on the province’s watch list, with over 50 cases per 100,000 people.

Dr. Hinshaw says that she spoke with local health officials earlier today to talk about the change in status.

“The majority of those cases seem to be linked to as single, large outbreak. It doesn’t seem at this time like there’s any significant community risk that goes across the whole community, but as I said earlier, we do occasional see these large workplace outbreaks that are a reminder that every workplace needs to be taking precautions to prevent spread within their employee group, as well as any spread between the employees and the public if they’re a public serving business.”

An outbreak was declared today at the Wal-Mart Supercentre. Currently there are nine active and one recovered case connected to the outbreak.

Dr. Hinshaw says there is no evidence that any additional measures are yet needed in the city but reminds residents that we need to work collectively in all the places we spend our days.

“It's also a reminder that there’s no part of the province that is spared from COVID-19 and rural areas that haven’t previously seen many cases, again it can just take a few active cases showing up in a location where measures are not being put in place or universally followed to unfortunately go from one or two active cases to many. And it’s just a reminder again that we all need the measures that are in place across the province.”

The County of Grande Prairie has just five active cases, with one new and two recoveries.

Four more deaths were reported over the weekend in the province, for a total of 286. Hospitalizations increased as well, from 86 to 97. Of these, 13 people are in intensive care. Dr. Hinshaw says that many of the recent acute care cases are from the Foothills Medical Centre and Misericordia Community Hospital outbreaks. Right now, 41% of hospitalizations are from acute care outbreaks.

Dr. Hinshaw reminds all Albertans to be extra diligent right now, as she remains concerned about the increase in numbers.

There are 2,615 active cases in the province, with 18,055 recoveries. Over the weekend, 567 Albertans recovered from the virus.

Today Dr. Hinshaw also announced a shift to an appointment-only model of testing – either through AHS online or by calling Health Link. She says that this won’t affect a lot of Albertans, since currently about 93% of tests are currently being pre-booked.

Dr. Hinshaw says the shift will make the system more efficient, and they are continuing to work on speeding up testing. She also reminds people to be kind to the AHS contact tracers and give them all the information they need as this will help with containing the spread of COVID-19.

Watch the full update here: