Everything you need to know about COVID-19 in Alberta on Monday, May 24

The latest on restrictions:

• Almost all Alberta K-12 students are to return to classrooms on Tuesday with the exception of students in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, who will stay home one more week.Alberta has announced new COVID-19 quarantine rules: Fully vaccinated Albertans no longer have to quarantine if they are exposed to COVID-19 and are not showing symptoms.
• And people who have had one shot can have their isolation time reduced.

• AHS says one positive case of COVID-19 has now been directly linked to the 'anti-lockdown' rodeo held to protest provincial COVID-19 restrictions near Bowden, Alta. earlier this month.
• The government introduced a bundle of tougher public-health restrictions again on May 4, to slow the spread of COVID-19 — measures Premier Jason Kenney said were needed to keep the health-care system from being overwhelmed.
• The new public health measures apply to all parts of Alberta except those with fewer than 50 cases per 100,000 people. 
• The full list of current restrictions is available on the province's website.

The latest on vaccines:

• 2,532,143 vaccine doses have been administered in Alberta, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford, as of May 23.
• 384 adverse events following immunization have been reported. The most common are allergic reactions, swelling of glands, and diarrhea/vomiting. Together these make up the majority of the adverse events reported.
• 48.7 per cent of Alberta's population has now received at least one dose of vaccine.
• 353,292 Albertans are fully immunized (two doses) — 7.9 per cent of the population.
• Hinshaw says people who got their first dose of vaccine outside of the province can get a second dose in Alberta with proof of vaccination, which will be entered into their health records.

(Note the latest daily count of new cases in the above chart will usually vary slightly from the net new cases Alberta Health announces each day. For more on why, click here.)

Watch | Alberta education minister, Opposition address plan to return students to classrooms:

Alberta students set to head back to in-school classes as COVID cases drop

4 years ago

Duration 2:24

Education Minister Adriana LaGrange and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw say it’s safe for students to head back to the classroom, but NDP education critic Sarah Hoffman says the province is just setting students up for another yo-yo cycle.

The latest COVID-19 numbers:

• Alberta reported 452 new COVID-19 cases on Monday and seven more deaths. 
• There were 13,608 active cases.
• The rate of active cases was 307 per 100,000 people in Alberta.
• The daily test positivity rate was 8.8 per cent.
• There were 569 people in hospital with COVID-19, including 161 in intensive care. 
• There have now been 2,183 COVID deaths. 
• 208,856 Albertans are considered to have recovered from COVID-19.
• The latest R-value reported for the province was 0.84, meaning the virus is spreading to less than one person for each confirmed case.
• Three of Calgary's four adult hospitals are once again dealing with a number of COVID-19 outbreaks. The outbreaks are driven by the variant first discovered in the U.K. Rockyview General Hospital has three impacted units including four patients and one healthcare worker. An outbreak at Peter Lougheed Centre involves one patient. And Foothills Medical Centre has two units on outbreak including four patients.
• Shoppers Drug Mart says it is now offering rapid antigen COVID-19 tests for asymptomatic people at all its pharmacies in Ontario and Alberta. The tests have to be purchased.

See which regions are being hit hardest:

Here is the detailed regional breakdown of active cases as reported by the province on Sunday. 

• Calgary zone: 5,853
• Edmonton zone: 3,361
• Central zone: 1,489
• South zone: 728
• North zone: 2,165
• Unknown: 12

You can see active cases by local health area on the following interactive map. Scroll, zoom and click on the map for more information:

Find out which neighbourhoods or communities have the most cases, how hard people of different ages have been hit, the ages of people in hospital, how Alberta compares to other provinces and more in: Here are the latest COVID-19 statistics for Alberta — and what they mean.

Here are the latest Alberta COVID-19 stories:

How Alberta compares to other provinces and territories: