COVID-19 in Alberta today

EDMONTON -

Alberta's COVID-19 hospitalizations are below 600 for the first time since early September.

There were 582 people in hospital with the disease, including 123 patients in ICUs, according to a provincial update on Wednesday.

Alberta also reported 484 new cases and five deaths.

According to the most recent data, 87.6 per cent of Alberta's eligible population has received at least one dose of vaccine, and 81.5 per cent is fully vaccinated.

Alberta Health will not update the province’s COVID-19 data on Remembrance Day. Numbers for Wednesday and Thursday will be provided Friday afternoon.

COVID-19 RELATED NEWS

Health officials are keeping their eye on a pair of new derivatives of the COVID-19 Delta variant that have appeared in Alberta and Saskatchewan.Alberta's top doctor has said there is no evidence that the new sublineage in her province causes "any more severe illness, that it evades vaccine protection, that it's significantly different from the Delta variant that has been circulating as the dominant strain in Alberta since late summer." 

The Alberta NDP is calling on the United Conservative government to provide more supports for Albertans affected by so-called "long COVID."A Calgary professor estimated 10 per cent of people who have had COVID-19 experience long-term symptoms. 

The government is reversing a decision to allow those with symptoms or who are positive for COVID-19 to work as a support person in maternity units. 

A recent study suggests while downtown Edmonton foot traffic is on the rise, the core is still only half as busy as it was before the pandemic.

In southern Alberta, a strike notice has been delivered to the company that operates a meat processing plant, where a massive COVID-19 outbreak infected roughly one in two employees in 2020.