More than 100,000 newly eligible Albertans booked their COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, and with more eligibility opening up in the coming days, Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw is calling for people to be patient if they have trouble booking their shot.
On Thursday, Albertans ages 30 and up became eligible for the shot. This coming Monday, further eligibility will open up for Albertans born before 2009.
"Come Monday, there will be more than 3.8 million people now eligible. (Alberta Health Services) and pharmacies are working diligently to schedule everybody, but it will take some time to get all first doses booked," Hinshaw said.
She encouraged people to keep trying a few hours or days later if they could not immediately get through to book an appointment.
Alberta labs are no longer screening every sample that comes in for variant strains of COVID-19. Hinshaw said Thursday with variant cases becoming the dominant strains, it should be assumed that all cases are variant cases.
"This frees up crucial lab capacity to ensure that people get their COVID-19 test results back as soon as possible," she said.
Alberta added 2,211 new COVID-19 cases and completed about 19,900 tests in the past 24 hours for a positivity rate of 11.1 per cent. There are currently 654 people in hospital with 146 in ICU. The province did not record any lives lost due to COVID-19 in the last 24 hours.
The province has administered 1.73 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of May 6, with 308,027 Albertans fully vaccinated.
On Thursday, St. Albert reported 19 new cases of the virus, while 27 more people recovered, bringing the city's active case count down to 259.
Sturgeon County now has 100 active cases, with 10 new cases being recorded in the past 24 hours. Twelve more people have recovered in the county.
Morinville has 31 active cases, having recorded one new case overnight as well as six recoveries.
