Anna Junker
Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw gives an update on COVID-19 case numbers on Thursday, March 25, 2021.Photo by Chris Schwarz /Government of Alberta
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Variants of concern are now the dominant strains of new COVID-19 cases in Alberta, chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw announced Thursday.
If an individual tests positive for COVID-19, they should assume they have the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the United Kingdom, which makes up about 99 per cent of all the provinces confirmed variant cases. Cases and close contacts of B.1.1.7 and the original COVID-19 strain will be treated the same going forward.
Effective immediately, the province is offering testing twice for close contacts of all confirmed cases regardless of the COVID-19 strain they may have been exposed to, Hinshaw said.
If you are a close contact, you will be offered testing as soon as you are notified and if you test negative, offered testing again 10 days after your last exposure, Hinshaw said.
By testing all close contacts twice we have a better chance at quickly identifying new cases and stopping their spread.
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Isolation requirements for the original COVID-19 strain and B.1.1.7 variant cases will also be aligned effective immediately. All new cases are strongly encouraged to isolate away from other household members in isolation hotels or other appropriate accommodation.
For cases of the previously dominant strain and B.1.1.7 variant, if an infected person remains separated away from their household with a separate bedroom and bathroom for their infectious period, the 14-day quarantine period begins for household contacts on the last day of contact with the case.
If any infected person remains in the same house but cannot isolate from the rest of their household, and for all cases of P.1 and B.1.351 variants even if they have a separate bedroom and bathroom household contacts are considered to be continuously exposed during the infectious period.
The 14-day quarantine period beginning after last exposure to the infected person also remains the same.
Due to the prominence of the B.1.1.7 variant, Alberta Health Services specialized variant contact tracing team will also now focus its efforts on the B.1.351 variant and the P.1 variant, Hinshaw said.
Alberta reported 1,429 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, the highest daily case count since Dec. 17.
All of the 717 new variant cases identified Thursday were of the B.1.1.7 variant. Variant causes currently make up about 45 per cent of the provinces 12,187 active cases.
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In total, 8,278 cases of variants of concern have been identified in the province.
There are 340 people hospitalized with COVID-19, an increase of seven from Wednesday. Of those, 83 are in intensive care units, an increase of four.
Three more deaths raised the provincial death toll from the virus to 2,005.
Meanwhile, Hinshaw said last month she signed a public health order that required extra testing and aggressive measures for all variant outbreaks in continuing care facilities.
She is now rescinding that order as the additional measures are not necessary in sites with high vaccine coverage, and tough outbreak protocols will only be implemented when local medical officers of health find it necessary.
As of end-of-day Thursday, 779,817 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered, or 17,443.1 doses per 100,000 people. There was an increase of 23,986 doses from the previous day.
There are 143,625 Albertans fully immunized with two doses, an increase of 10,224.
ajunker@postmedia.com
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