There are now more than 800 people in hospital with COVID-19 in Alberta.
Alberta Health data released Monday afternoon shows there are 803 people being treated for the disease in hospital. That’s a jump from 686 COVID-19 patients in hospital as of Friday afternoon.
Of those in hospital, 198 are in intensive care — a jump from 169 COVID-19 patients in intensive care on Friday.
“AHS continues to do all it can to ensure we have enough ICU capacity to meet patient demand, including opening additional spaces and redeploying staff,” Alberta Health Services said in a statement Monday.
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AHS said there are 286 ICU beds currently open in Alberta, including 113 additional spaces as of 11 a.m. Monday. In the past seven days, the health authority said it has opened 37 additional ICU surge spaces.
Provincially, ICU capacity — including additional surge beds — was sitting at 90 per cent on Monday.
“Without the additional surge spaces, provincial ICU capacity would be 148 per cent. The number of patients in ICU has increased by 19 per cent in the past seven days,” AHS said.
Earlier Monday, AHS announced yet again that more elective surgeries and outpatient procedures were being rescheduled in order to free up hospital space.
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The surging ICU capacity due to COVID-19 comes as 4,740 new cases of the disease were identified in Alberta over the last three days.
The province said 1,659 cases were identified Friday, 1,497 cases were identified Saturday and 1,584 new cases were reported Sunday.
Alberta also reported 18 additional COVID-19 deaths since Friday, bringing the province’s death toll to 2,462.
There are now 18,395 active cases in Alberta. Of those, 5,357 are in the Edmonton zone, 5,226 are in the Calgary zone, 3,199 are in the North zone, 2,751 are in the Central zone, 1,802 are in the South zone and 60 are in an unknown zone.
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As of Sunday afternoon, 79.2 per cent of eligible Albertans 12 and older had received one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 71.2 per cent were fully vaccinated.
Since the pandemic began in the spring of 2020, 270,777 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been identified in Alberta. Of those, 249,920 people have recovered.