In Monday’s (Feb. 22) COVID-19 update, Alberta added 273 new cases of COVID-19 from 6,062 tests completed for a positivity rate of about 4.5%.

Right now, 4,675 cases are active in the province and the recovered total has reached 124,818.

There’s 324 people in the hospital with the virus, with 53 of these in intensive care. In the North Zone, there’s 44 people in the hospital with one of these admitted to intensive care.

Alberta has reported 16 more COVID-related deaths, for a total of 1,843 since the start of the pandemic. Dr. Hinshaw, chief medical officer of health, says many of these were from December and were identified post-mortem as being caused by COVID-19.

Eleven more variant cases of COVID-19 were found since the previous day, for a total of 289. There have not yet been variant cases found in the North Zone. Dr. Hinshaw says that on average, variant cases have accounted for about 3.5% of our new cases in February.

There have now been 173,539 vaccine doses administered. Those who have received two doses and are fully immunized is more than 69,000.

Alberta had an R value, or reproduction number, of 1.03 (0.98-1.07) from Feb. 15 to Feb. 21. The Edmonton Zone had a value of 0.93 (0.84-1.02), Calgary Zone was 0.95 (0.88-1.02) and the rest of Alberta was 1.13 (1.06-1.20).

This reproductive number means that our cases are trending upwards.

Dr. Hinshaw says that while our hospitalizations are below the threshold in Step 2 of easing restrictions, the growing cases in recent days means Alberta will take the full three weeks allotted to assess whether to move forward.

No decisions on easing restrictions will be made until Mar. 1 at the earliest.

Dr. Hinshaw says, “We are being cautious as it is too early to say if this recent increase is significant or but a temporary pause in the strong downward trend we have seen over the past several months. This extra time will allow us to evaluate our current situation.”

The doctor clarified in a Tweet this morning (Feb. 23), that if the decision to move forward on Mar. 1 is made, restrictions could be eased that same day.

Watch the full update here: