EDMONTON -- For the third day in a row, Alberta broke pandemic records for COVID-19 infections reported in one day and total active cases.

In a limited update delivered on Saturday through Twitter, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the province had 2,433 cases after completing 20,457 tests. This put the positivity rate at 12 per cent.

Saturday’s reported cases represent Alberta’s largest one-day increase of cases. Prior to Saturday, April 29 had the highest reported amount of cases in one day with 2,048.

The province now has a seven-day average of 1,858 COVID-19 infections.

Hospitalizations declined from 659 on Friday to 646 Saturday while ICU admissions remained steady at 152 from Friday’s pandemic high.

One additional death from COVID-19 was reported Saturday. A man in his 70s from the Edmonton zone who had comorbidities died from the virus.

Alberta identified 1,743 new variant of concern cases Saturday, Hinshaw said. Of the variant cases reported Saturday, 1,336 were the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the United Kingdom, 392 cases of the P.1 variant first identified in Brazil, and 15 cases of B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa.

Variants now represent 62.1 per cent of active cases in the province.

The Edmonton zone had the largest increase of variant cases Saturday with 467 new cases. The Calgary zone had 419, while the North and Central zones had 310 and 243 cases, respectively. The South zone had 83 new variant of concern cases.

As of Friday, nearly 1.59 million vaccine doses had been delivered in Alberta with approximately 299,929 second doses – approximately 6.7 per cent of the population.

Twenty-nine per cent of Albertans have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Over 168,500 people have recovered from COVID-19 in the province.