COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to decline as Alberta reports 2 more deaths

Parents waiting on COVID-19 vaccine plan Alberta is now the only province without a public plan to vaccinate young children against COVID-19. Nicole Lampa reports.

Alberta COVID-19 hospitalizations declined slightly on Thursday.

There are 1,357 patients with COVID-19 in hospitals, and 92 of them are in intensive care units.

Two more Albertans — a man in his 60s and a woman in her 60s — have died of COVID-19, increasing total deaths to 3,885.

Alberta now has 10,626 known active cases after it added 682 new infections on Thursday.

The active case count is likely much higher as PCR testing is limited and the province is not counting results from take-home rapid tests.

Alberta has administered nearly 8.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, and 80.8 per cent of the eligible population have one dose, 75.8 per cent have two shots, and 35.2 per cent have received a booster.

The province will update its COVID-19 data on Friday afternoon.

OTHER COVID-19 RELATED NEWS 

In an attempt to make COVID-19 vaccines more accessible to families, Alberta Health Services will accept walk-in appointments for kids aged five to 11 March 2-16.

The president of the Alberta Teachers' Association says he is cautiously optimistic after seeing COVID-19 cases go down in classrooms. A little more than a week ago, the province lifted a mask mandate in schools.

A criminal anthropologist says Alberta appears to have been the epicentre of unrest that started with truckers over cross-border vaccine mandates, but quickly attracted other groups with their own agendas.