The Government of Alberta introduced its toughest measures yet to control the huge spike of COVID-19 cases that are happening in the third wave of the pandemic this week.  

Today (May 6) Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health defended the implementation of those measures, saying they are "absolutely necessary if we are to reduce community transmission and stop cases from getting out of control." 

During her daily COVID-19 update, Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the first two waves of the virus showed that uncontrolled spread can happen quickly and the higher cases get, the harder it is to bend the curve back down and reduce the spread in the province.  Hinshaw said that happened even before we were dealing with the more infectious COVID-19 variants.

"We don't yet know if we have hit the peak of new cases," she said.  "Our provincial R-value (reproduction number) of 1.12 last week tells us that cases are continuing to grow.  That's why implementing these measures now is so critical."

Hinshaw said the spread in Alberta is extremely high, which means the risk of being infected is also extremely high.

Today the province is reporting another 2,211 new cases of the virus bringing our active cases to 24,497.  That's 341 more than on Wednesday.  The province conducted 19,909 tests for a positivity rate of 11.1 percent.

Variants made up 536 of the new cases and are now responsible for 55.3 percent of all active cases in Alberta.

Hinshaw said she was pleased to announce that no more deaths had been reported.  Hospitalizations were also down by 12 to 654 with patients in provincial ICUs remaining the same as yesterday at 146.

Active cases in Airdrie rose by 20 to 538.  Our rate per 100,000 people is now 746.4 active cases.

In Rocky View County cases spiked by 21 today making 283 with 632.1 cases per 100,000 population.

The province administered 37,907 doses of COVID-19 vaccine today, bringing the total number of doses given out to 1,732,582.  

All Albertans 30 and older were given their first chance to book a COVID-19 vaccine and many took advantage of that with AHS reporting a lineup of nearly 57,000 at times.  On Monday, everyone over 12 years of age can book their immunization appointment.  

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