Alberta reports 86 new COVID-19 cases, 2 deaths

Concern over COVID-19 case spike Dr. Deena Hinshaw expressed concern over Alberta's recent spike in COVID-19 cases. CTV News Edmonton's Matt Woodman has more.

EDMONTON — Alberta Health reported 86 new cases of COVID-19 and two more deaths Tuesday.

A total of 701 Albertans currently have the novel coronavirus, with 55 of them in hospital, including 13 in ICUs.

"The virus has now been in Alberta for four months, and while and we saw cases decline from the peak seen in April, our daily cases have began to rise over the past few days," Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, said Tuesday.

"As the premier and I both mentioned yesterday, we are concerned about the recent rise in cases we are seeing."

According to Hinshaw, out of the 780 cases of COVID-19 registered in the past two weeks, 57 per cent of them are under the age of 40 and 30 per cent of them don't know who they got the virus from.

"This is a reminder that COVID-19 can spread quickly and cases can rise rapidly if we don’t all do our part," she said.

Alberta has had 8,912 cases of COVID-19 and 163 deaths since March.

MISERICORDIA COMMUNITY HOSPITAL OUTBREAK

One of the two new deaths came at the Misericordia Community Hospital in Edmonton, where there have been a total of 49 cases of COVID-19 and six deaths.

Hinshaw says the province is investigating how the outbreak started.

There are currently 34 active cases at the hospital, which continues to operate under a full facility outbreak.

Alberta also added Wheatland County, with 10 active cases within a population nearing 7,000, to its watch list, joining County of Warner No. 5, Municipal District of Willow Creek No. 26 and Mackenzie County.