Jason Herring
A passenger on a Calgary Transit bus rider wears a mask and looks out the window in Calgary on Friday, June 25, 2021. Photo by Jim Wells /Postmedia
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Albertas COVID-19 case counts jolted sharply upwards this past week, with the province detecting 100 new cases Thursday, and 173 new cases Friday the highest daily rates since mid-June.
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The surge follows a steep decline in cases during Albertas third wave in mid-May. It comes just over three weeks after Alberta lifted nearly all its public-health restrictions July 1, and two weeks after the start of the Calgary Stampede July 9.
The spread is driven largely by the highly contagious Delta variant, which is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in Alberta, comprising 81 per cent of the provinces active variant cases.
Although Alberta found 173 new COVID-19 cases Friday, the province reported a net increase of only 98 cases a discrepancy Alberta Health said was due to previous cases mistakenly logged twice being removed from the provincial database.
Earlier this week, Premier Jason Kenney said he believes the virus is moving from a pandemic to an endemic state.
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COVID continues to exist, Kenney said. The virus will continue to circulate. The numbers will go up and theyll go down, but what matters most is that the widespread protective effect of vaccines is real. We should embrace the science.
Nearly 2.83 million Albertans have been immunized against the novel coronavirus with at least one shot of vaccine, representing 63.9 per cent of Albertans, and 75.2 per cent of those aged 12 and over who are eligible for the shot. Sixty-two per cent of those eligible have had both necessary doses.
Here are three statistics that help explain the trends driving this most-recent spike in COVID-19 cases in Alberta.
1. Young adults are the most infected and the least immunized
Albertans aged 20 to 29 represent a disproportionate number of recent COVID-19 infections detected in the province.
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The age group represented 39 per cent of new cases in Alberta over the past week, even though they make up only 13 per cent of the provinces population.
Albertans in their 20s are also the cohort with the lowest rates of immunization, with 62 per cent having received at least one dose of vaccine, well below the provincial average.
While younger people are less likely to have severe illness from COVID-19, they can suffer both short- and long-term health effects from the disease. In Alberta, 522 people in their 20s have ended up in hospital from the virus, and 11 have died.
2. Infection rates are highest in Calgary, and city wastewater predicted it
Albertas largest city and nearby communities are home to more than half of the provinces active COVID-19 cases, despite representing only about a third of its population.
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There are 367 active coronavirus infections in the Alberta Health Service Calgary zone, a number thats climbed in recent days.
Its a trend foreseen by Calgarys wastewater, with sampling from the University of Calgary showing an increased prevalence of the virus that causes COVID-19 since late June.
I think wastewater data is one of the best ways to see if the curve stays flat or not, said Casey Hubert, an associate professor in biological sciences at the university, who is helping lead the research.
Its important for Calgarians, if theyre checking the data on our public tracker, to be able to make some of their own personal decisions about whether theyre going to keep their guard up.
Hubert explained testing a populations excrement for the virus that causes COVID-19 has generally detected spikes in cases about six days before they are recorded via testing. The methodology is capable of detecting variant strains as well, including the Delta variant.
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He said researchers will continue to monitor the wastewater data as long as funding allows.
3. Albertans severely ill from COVID-19 are overwhelmingly unvaccinated
Hospitalization rates continue to decline in Alberta, with only 84 COVID-19 patients currently in hospital, the fewest since early October.
But one attribute unites the vast majority of Albertans currently receiving hospital care for COVID-19 infection: they have not been fully immunized against the virus.
About 90 per cent of those now in hospital with the coronavirus are either unvaccinated, have only had one shot of vaccine or are less than two weeks past their second shot.
Vaccines have proven to be effective in preventing COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Alberta. Only 646 out of the 2,305,939 Albertans fully immunized against COVID-19 have tested positive for the virus, or 0.03 per cent.
jherring@postmedia.com
Twitter: @jasonfherring
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