Wednesday, May 15, 2019
NEWS PHOTO EMMA BENNETT
Medicine Hat Regional Hospital.
Medicine Hat News
The 100th COVID-related death has been recorded in Medicine Hat.
Figures posted on Wednesday afternoon in the province’s weekly case summary show the city passed the milestone sometime during the week leading up to June 13, when two deaths were added to the total.
Medicine Hat also moved back into a “high” case number rating that is now used, showing 16 new positively confirmed cases in those seven days.
Health Minister Jason Copping told a press conference that cases are lower in the province, but hospitals are still “strained.”
“The latest total of 719 is less than half the Omicron peak, the lowest since early January, and we expect the numbers to continue to trend down,” he said in a statement. “Our hospitals, EMS and other services remain under strain, especially in Edmonton and Calgary, for the same reasons as in other provinces: a wave of patients in recent months due to deferred care over the past two years, large numbers of patients with COVID-19 due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, plus a late season for flu and other respiratory viruses.”
All remaining health restrictions in the province — such as masking on public transit — were removed this week.
The city’s first death related to the highly transmissible respiratory illness was recorded on July 2, 2020.
Just more than half the total number of deaths, 54, were recorded during a two-month span in the early fall of 2021. At that point on Oct. 22, 2021, deaths totalled 76, and the count rose more slowly but steadily over the next eight months.
The number sat at 90 at the beginning of April.
AHS records the residence of the deceased person by postal code.
Medicine Hat’s figures show lower total cases but higher moralities per capita than other mid-sized, geographically separated centres in Alberta.
Medicine Hat, with 68,000 residents, now has had 8,066 cases since March 2020, compared to cities of about 100,000 residents, like Lethbridge (13,163 cases, 109 deaths) and Red Deer (15,222 cases, 111 deaths).
Grande Prairie has seen 68 residents die, Brooks 33 and Fort McMurray 24.
Seven deaths had been located in Cypress County, five in the County of Forty Mile, 21 in the Municipal District of Taber, 10 in Newell County and one in Acadia Valley.
The total number of deaths in the province attributed to COVID-19 is now 4,591.
