Of Alberta's 1,058 New COVID Cases, None Vaccinated

The province registered another 1,660 COVID cases Thursday.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw says 1,058 people are in hospital with 226 of those in ICU.

There were additional deaths as well.

"Sadly I must announce that 17 new deaths were reported to Alberta Health in the last 24 hours, as with the deaths reported earlier this week, while a small number of these individuals were double vaccinated with preexisting health conditions most were not vaccinated at all," she says.

Dr. Hinshaw says 100 per cent of the new COVID cases were people who have not been vaccinated.

AHS president and CEO Dr. Verna Yiu says over the last five days they've seen over 20 new patients moved into intensive care units each day.

"There are 310 Albertans in ICU, of which 226 patients have COVID-19, we've never ever had that number of total patients in ICU before, never with the prior waves and never in the history of this province."

"Each day we see a new high, yesterday (Sept. 22) alone we had 22 Albertans who were admitted to our ICU's as COVID patients, the day before we had 23 and over the past five days the average number of COVID ICU admissions have been more than 23 per day," she says.

She says the only way they've been able to keep pace is because some of the ICU patients have passed away, leaving a lasting impact on staff.

Here's a breakdown of the active case count in the area:

- Okotoks: 171 active cases

- High River: 61 active cases

- Foothills County: 120 active cases

- Willow Creek MD: 91 active cases

- Vulcan County: 50

Questions, comments or story ideas? e-mail news@highriveronline.com