What you need to know about COVID-19 in Alberta on Tuesday, Sept. 29

The latest:

• A total of 60 cases are now tied to the outbreaks at Calgary's Foothills hospital: 31 patients, including four who have died, 27 health-care workers, and two visitors who were in contact with patients linked to the outbreaks. Another 154 staff, bringing the total to 290, are self-isolating. 
• Another 160 people in Alberta tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total active cases to 1,571, up 22 since the last update on Monday.
• One more person has died, a man in his 80s in the Edmonton area, bringing the total deaths to 266. 
• There are 210 confirmed cases in 113 schools across the province, and 47 schools are classified as outbreaks. Six of those have more than five cases each, putting them the 'watch' category. See the provincial school status map here. 
• Alberta labs have now performed more than one million tests. 

• Cases have surged alarmingly in some other provinces. On Monday, Ontario reported an additional 700 cases, the most on a single day in that province since the outbreak began in late January. Quebec similarly reported 750 new cases on Monday and intends to put the province's two largest cities under the highest COVID-19 alert level, bringing new restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, Manitoba recorded its second-highest single-day increase on Saturday.

What you need to know today in Alberta:

A total of 60 patients, staff and visitors have tested positive for COVID-19 at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. It's the second largest outbreak tied to a health-care institution in the province since the pandemic began.

Alberta Health Services said Tuesday there are a total of 31 positive patient cases linked to the outbreaks, 27 positive health-care workers, as well as two positive visitors. 

Four patients have died, including a man in his 70s whose death was announced on the weekend, an 82-year-old man who had been in a cardiac unit suffering from congestive heart failure since August and a woman in her 70s in the cardiac unit. 

As of Tuesday, 290 health-care workers were self-isolating. AHS said that number would be updated twice weekly.

An outbreak has also been declared in one unit at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. According to Alberta Health Services, the outbreak involves three health-care workers. At-risk patients in the unit have been tested and no positive COVID-19 cases have been identified among patients. AHS did not identify which health unit was affected.

The largest outbreak at a health-care institution so far in the province involved the Misericordia Community Hospital in west Edmonton, which has reopened after closing its doors to new patients in early July in response to a full-facility outbreak that killed 11 and infected 58.

There are 1,571 active COVID-19 cases in Alberta as of Tuesday. Of the 63 people in hospital, 13 are in intensive care.

Here's the regional breakdown of active cases reported on Tuesday:

• Edmonton zone: 815, up by 36 from Monday's update. 
• Calgary zone: 574, down by 1. 
• North zone: 120, down by 13. 
• South zone: 40, up by 2. 
• Central zone: 21, up by 3. 
• Unknown: 1, down by 5. 

Despite thousands of complaints of people not following COVID-19 restrictions, RCMP and Edmonton police have only handed out 40 tickets since the spring.

Alberta Health Services said it received 5,100 reports of a "concern about a business or public place that is not following restrictions," between May 23 and Sept. 22. 

RCMP Cpl. Deanna Fontaine, a media relations officer, said officers issued 20 tickets for violations under the Alberta Public Health Act or the Federal Quarantine Act between mid-May and end of September.

Those fines were related to U.S. travellers contravening border control orders, residents not complying with foreign travel quarantine orders and others not adhering to physical distancing requirements.

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

What you need to know today in Canada:

As of 5:20 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Canada had 155,301 confirmed or presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 132,607 of those as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC's reporting stood at 9,318. 

Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand today announced today a plan to buy roughly 7.9 million rapid point-of-care COVID-19 tests from U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories.

The purchase is meant to offer other testing options to Canadians at a time when the country's testing apparatus is being severely strained, with coronavirus caseloads spiking in some regions.

Cases of COVID-19 will likely continue to climb in Canada's most populous provinces for a while even if people start to hunker down, experts say, because of the nature of the infection.

The effective reproductive number of COVID-19 in Canada continues to hover at 1.4, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported on Friday. That means for every 10 people who test positive for COVID-19, they'll likely infect 14 others who then pass it on to 20 others and so on.

On Monday, Ontario reported the most new cases on a single day since the outbreak began in late January, an additional 700. The figure surpasses the previous high of 640, which came on April 24.

A majority of newly confirmed cases are concentrated in four public health units: Toronto, Peel Region, Ottawa and York Region. About 60 per cent of the new cases were found in people under 40 years old, according to the provincial health minister.

As the race for a COVID-19 vaccine intensifies, global health activists are pleading with wealthier countries such as Canada to do more to secure vaccines for nations that might not otherwise be able to afford them.

Canada signed an agreement last week to purchase 20 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine from AstroZeneca. There were already deals in place with Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Pfizer and Moderna.

But the rise of so-called vaccine nationalism has some global health experts sounding the alarm. 

"Poorer countries don't have the same capacity," Ronald Labonté, former Canada research chair in globalization and health equity at the University of Ottawa, told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning. "It risks crowding out these other countries from being able to get some access in the short term to the vaccine supply." 

Self-assessment and supports:

Alberta Health Services has an online self-assessment tool that you can use to determine if you have symptoms of COVID-19, but testing is open to anyone, even without symptoms. 

The province says Albertans who have returned to Canada from other countries must self-isolate. Unless your situation is critical and requires a call to 911, Albertans are advised to call Health Link at 811 before visiting a physician, hospital or other health-care facility.

If you have symptoms, even mild, you are to self-isolate for at least 10 days from the onset of symptoms, until the symptoms have disappeared. 

You can find Alberta Health Services' latest coronavirus updates here.

The province also operates a confidential mental health support line at 1-877-303-2642 and addiction help line at 1-866-332-2322, both available 24 hours a day. 

Online resources are available for advice on handling stressful situations and ways to talk with children.

There is a 24-hour family violence information line at 310-1818 to get anonymous help in more than 170 languages, and Alberta's One Line for Sexual Violence is available at 1-866-403-8000, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.