Check against delivery.
Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon everyone.
We have now administered more than 106,000 doses of vaccine in our province. More than 16,200 Albertans have now been fully immunized with two doses.
Over the last 24 hours, we have identified 355 new cases of COVID-19, and completed about 7,300 tests.
Our positivity rate currently stands at about 4.9%.
Looking to schools, there are currently active alerts or outbreaks in 298 schools, or about 12% of the schools in the province.
These schools have a combined total of 701 cases.
Currently, in-school transmission has been detected in 66 schools and, of these, 51 have seen only one new case occur as a result.
Encouragingly, the average daily number of new cases in the school-age population continues to fall week over week.
Looking at last week, on average, 71 new cases were identified each day among school-aged Albertans. This is down from the 131 daily cases that we saw on average the week before school started in person.
So far, returning to school in person has not caused increased spread in this age group. And, as I said, in fact cases continue to fall.
We also continued to see hospitalizations decline over the weekend.
Currently, there are 556 people in hospital, including 102 admitted to the ICU. The steady decline we’re seeing is encouraging, and a testament to the ongoing hard work of so many.
Sadly, I must announce that 10 new deaths were reported to Alberta Health in the last 24 hours.
My sympathies go out to all who have lost loved ones recently, whether to COVID-19 or any other cause.
While our cases and hospitalizations are trending down, we still have work to do.
We’ve reached a place where we should be able to further ease measures on February 8th, but we have seen cases fall and rise before.
We all must remain vigilant and be extra careful to help keep schools, continuing care facilities, and all other settings safe, and to keep our hospitalizations trending downwards.
We all must keep doing our part to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our community at large.
Thank you and I’m happy to take questions.