COVID-19

High amounts of available COVID-19 vaccines, along with increasing eligibility have caused high vaccination rates in the region.

The Northwestern Health Unit has released their weekly vaccine update and shows a 73.1 per cent overall vaccination rate of people 18 years of age and older receiving at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. That is a jump of 2 per cent from last week where the region had a 71.1 per cent vaccination rate.

Some changes are being made to how the province reports COVID-19 data.

Alberta's chief medical officer of health, Dr Deena Hinshaw, provided the update Tuesday (June 22), saying that with cases of COVID-19 dropping and vaccination rates climbing, the province would no longer be reporting COVID-19 cases or vaccine numbers on weekends.

"We are entering a new phase in our fight against this virus," she explained.

She added that the R-value reports will be shifting from weekly to bi-weekly reporting. 

Dr. Deena Hinshaw provided a live update today after a week away and she returns to very encouraging COVID-19 numbers.

There were 57 new cases reported in the past 24 hours with a positivity rate of 1.4 per cent.

The province now has 1,773 active COVID-19 cases which is the lowest number since October 2, 2020

There were 38 new cases of variants of concern identified.

There are 200 people in hospital, a drop of 14 and 54 in ICU which is a decrease of two. 

Sadly, one additional death has been reported bringing the total in the province to 2,290. 

Welcome news will be coming for Manitoban businesses this week.

Finance Minister Scott Fielding says during a mid-day press conference on Tuesday that Manitoba is making another round of Bridge Grant program payments. The Manitoba Bridge Grant program is also opening to new applications.

"There have been a lot of business supports, but the number one goal is to get Manitobans vaccinated and get their lives back," Fielding says in a press conference.

New COVID-19 cases in Manitoba continue to follow a steady decline after weeks of troubling caseloads.

As of Tuesday morning, there are 69 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba. Cases include:

A young woman is facing charges after the death of a boy on Saturday.

The Winnipeg Police Service is charging a 19-year-old Winnipeg woman with Manslaughter after the stabbing of a 12-year-old.

On Saturday evening, officers were called to the 200 block of Burrows Avenue. When they arrive with General Patrol officers, a Tactical Support Team and K9 Unit, they located the seriously injured boy on the road.

The Northwestern Health Unit has reported 1 new positive case of COVID-19 in the region.The positive case was confirmed in the District of Rainy River area.

Follow up with the persons involved and their contacts has started according to protocol. Anyone who is identified as a contact for these cases will be contacted directly.

Currently, the NWHU is reporting 6 active cases across the catchment area. One each in the Dryden/Red Lake, Sioux Lookout and Rainy River regions and three in the Kenora Health Region, but 1 case was confirmed outside of the NWHU catchment area.

After weeks of high ticket counts, this week's COVID-19 enforcement efforts are yielding fewer-than-usual tickets and warnings.

This past week, the province gave out 59 tickets and 87 warnings to people not following the Public Health Orders.

Tickets include:

The latest COVID-19 update showed numbers that haven't been seen in Alberta in nearly a year.

Alberta Health reported 60 new cases Monday, the lowest numbers since last August.

The total number of active cases dropped but the number of hospitalizations and intensive care patients either remained the same or went up. 

There are 2.003 active cases in the province right now, the lowest it's been since Oct. 7.

Currently, 214 people are in the hospital due to COVID-19 and 56 are in intensive care. Yesterday, these numbers were 214 and 53 respectively.

Curious about what's going on with the traffic situation or any other construction project in Cochrane?

The town is hosting a Report to the Community tomorrow night with the purpose of answering these questions and more.

It's a Facebook live event and Mayor Jeff Genung says "You're going to hear from councillors talking about the COVID response, how Cochrane did throughout COVID, some updates on what happened over the 2020 fiscal year, a financial update and finally a bit of an update on all of the capitol projects that we're undertaking this year."