Active cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations continue to trend down in Alberta

50 per cent of Albertans over 12 have one dose More than 50 per cent of Albertans over 12 have gotten one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. CTV News Edmonton's Touria Izri reports.

EDMONTON — Another 621 cases of COVID-19 were reported in Alberta Saturday.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw reported the numbers in a limited update over Twitter. The top doctor for Alberta said the province’s positivity rate is at 6.7 per cent after approximately 9,500 tests were completed.

The last time the positivity rate was below 7 per cent was back on March 31 this year when the positivity rate was 6.74 per cent after completing 13,645 tests.

Hospitalizations and ICU admissions also dropped for the third day in a row Saturday to 617 and 164, respectively. On Friday, there were 638 people in hospital and 177 in ICU.

Six more Albertans have died from COVID-19, raising the province’s total number of deaths to 2,170.

There are 15,502 active cases in Alberta.

More than 2 million Albertans have now got a first shot of COVID-19 vaccine and more than 340,000 are fully immunized with two shots.

Most students are due to return to classrooms again on Tuesday after returning to online learning for several weeks due to a number of issues, including record-high COVID-19 case counts.

Key metrics of seven-day daily new cases averages, active cases per 1 million Albertans, and the amount of patients in hospital with COVID-19 continue to trend downward after peaking earlier in May.

The seven-day average for COVID-19 infections is 856.

Alberta continues to lead Canada for active cases per 1 million population with Manitoba a close second.

The Calgary zone leads Alberta for active cases with 6,964 infections while the Edmonton zone has 3,729. The North zone has 2,375 and the Central zone has 1,627. The South zone has 803 and four active cases have an unknown zone of origin.

Active case counts have trended down in every zone in Alberta since last Sunday.

On May 16, the Calgary zone had almost half of all active cases in the province with 10,515. The Edmonton zone had 5,035 while the North zone had 3,309. The Central and South zones had 2,291 and 1,101, respectively. Twenty-nine cases had an unknown zone of origin at that time.

Hinshaw is expected to provide an in-person update next week.

Approximately 205,960 Albertans have recovered from COVID-19.