Alberta still testing thousands of people for COVID every day

By GILLIAN SLADE on November 18, 2020.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade

Back in April the post lockdown strategy planned by Premier Jason Kenny included mass testing.

According to a News story published April 8, Kenney said his plans included, “As many as 20,000 COVID-19 tests a day.”

The planned tests were to not only identify positive cases but also those with immunity in a more timely fashion, Kenney said at the time.

Alberta has been making strides in testing new cases over the last seven months. The daily number of COVID-19 tests has been as high as 17,106 on Oct. 24.

On or about Nov. 4 some technical difficulties were experienced. This resulted in the actual number of tests performed each day, across the province and by zone, no longer being reported on the Alberta Health website and also not being revealed in a press release.

“There was an error in the lab feed between Alberta Precision Labs and Alberta Health that has now been resolved. The data is now in the Alberta Health’s system and we are working to associate it to the correct date. This work should be completed this week,” said a spokesperson for Alberta Health in an emailed response to questions on Tuesday.

For the week of November 9-15, the average daily number of tests across the province was 13,200.