EDMONTON -- Alberta has another 1,592 newly reported COVID-19 cases Saturday.
The province completed approximately 17,700 tests, leading to a positivity rate of nine per cent, the province’s top doctor said in a limited COVID-19 update on Twitter.
Alberta now has 19,446 active cases.
Variant cases now make up 60.9 per cent of active cases in Alberta, with 1,132 new variant of concern cases identified.
There are now 584 people in hospital, including 129 in ICU.
Hospitalizations started to steadily increase Friday. There were 518 on Thursday. Friday saw them increase by 31 to 549.
Five more Albertans have died from COVID-19, including three people in their 50s and 60s in the Calgary zone.
A female in her 90s in the Edmonton zone died from the COVID-19 outbreak linked to the Grey Nuns Community Hospital.
A female in their 70s from the Calgary zone died as well.
All of the deaths reported Saturday included comorbidities.
There are now 2,059 who have died from COVID-19.
There are 8,283 active cases of COVID-19 in the Calgary zone.
The Edmonton zone has 5,536 cases while the North zone has 2,766. The Central zone and South zone have 2,105 and 954 cases, respectively. There are 17 cases of the virus that have an unknown zone of origin.
More than 157,000 people have recovered from COVID-19 in Alberta and nearly 1.32 million doses of vaccines have been administered as of Thursday.
