COVID-19

Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland presented Canada’s 2021 Fall Economic and Fiscal Update virtually to the House of Commons on Tuesday (Dec 14, 2021).

One of the big take a way's from the report was Canada’s deficit is projected to be much lower than originally forecasted in the April budget.

On Wednesday, December 15, more than 3.1 million Albertans 12 years of age and older (or 85 per cent) are now fully immunized against COVID-19 with two shots.

While at the same time, 89.4 per cent of Albertans age 12 and up have received at least one dose of vaccine.

To date, 95,000 pediatric vaccines have been administered to children aged five to eleven. 

Officials continue to stress the importance of immunization particularly in the wake of the rising number of Omicron cases.

The province has provided more details in the wake of a recent announcement.

Starting Friday (Dec.17), Albertans can pick up a free BTNX rapid test kit from 700 pharmacies in Edmonton, Calgary, and Red Deer, as well as 140 Alberta Health Services sites in other communities. 

The provincial government has a gift for Albertans this holiday season.

With COVID-19 case numbers low in the province, some changes have been made to gathering restrictions. The maximum indoor gathering limit remains at 10 adults, however, the government said this can now involve more than two households. Albertans under 18 years of age do not count toward the limit.

This is in effect immediately and will affect everyone, regardless of vaccination status.

Due to an increasing amount of COVID-19 cases across the province and the emergence of the new Omicron variant, Ontario is rapidly speeding up its third dose roll-out campaign.

Announced by Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Wednesday afternoon, as of Monday, December 20, all residents above the age of 18 years old will be eligible for their third dose of the vaccine, as long as it's been at least 3 months or 84 days since your second dose of the vaccine.

Manitoba's premier and health minister say $19.5 million will be used to create many more nursing student spots across the province.

Premier Heather Stefanson says this is part of a two-year plan to add close to 400 nursing seats across Manitoba, expanding the number of nursing spots by roughly 50 per cent to more than 800 seats.

At approximately 4 pm on December 14, store manager of Strathmore Value Drug Mart, Stacie Morck, was allegedly assaulted after advising a man about their mask policy.  

She explained that she noticed the man not wearing a mask, and politely asked him to put one on.  

Manitoba has only six confirmed cases of the Omicron variant. Yet, our Chief Provincial Public Health Officer says if our province follows the pattern of other jurisdictions, we could soon start to see case counts skyrocket.

According to the Ontario Science Table Dashboard, as of December 14th, 30.8 per cent of cases in that province are Omicron. The doubling time for Omicron is three days, compared to the Delta variant which was 34 days.

Manitoba's five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate is 6.2 per cent.

There are 206 COVID-19 cases in Manitoba, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases to 70,340. One new omicron variant case has been identified, bringing the total number of cases to six.

There are 1,779 active cases and 67,204 recoveries.

New cases by health region include:

Manitoba's Chief Public Health Officer is pleading with the public to get their COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, showing omicron modelling predicting a spike of more than 1,000 daily COVID-19 cases by the new year.

Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin says during a Wednesday press conference that there have been very few omicron variant cases in Manitoba but is "quite concerned" about the variant and that community spread is unavoidable.