Wednesday, August 12, 2020 Vol. 43, No. 33
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Your LOCAL Paper!
Viking Mayor meets with officials to clear up confusion COVID-19 maps now labelled ‘Viking (Beaver County East)’ and ‘Tofield (Beaver County West)’ Patricia Harcourt Editor
Viking Mayor Jason Ritchie held a virtual meeting with provincial and Alberta Health Services officials to discuss recent confusion over Viking and COVID-19 reporting. “We had a meeting to address the interactive map and the concerns Viking had about being misinterpreted,” he said, “by people and the media regarding the naming of the local geographical area.” Ritchie explained: “The general public and media misconstrued the reporting structure of the interactive map.” But now there are new names on the interpretive map called ‘Viking (Beaver County East)’ and Tofield (Beaver County West)’ as of Aug. 11 which should make understanding the data easier. The previous day, Dr. Hinshaw, Chief Medical Officer of Health for Alberta, had explained in her update that the former map that said simply Viking and Wainwright did not mean cases were only in those specific centres. “One question has to do with the online map of COVID-19 case numbers in our interactive data app online. The areas on the map can be viewed by municipality or by local geographic
areas. Local Geographic Areas (LGA) are organized according to an internal mapping system used by AHS. “This naming convention has been in place for some time, however LGA names were not created with a real time map and a pandemic in mind,” she said. “This has led to some confusion about the area names. “For example, in the LGAs named Viking and Wainwright, people are asking if all the numbers in these areas are in these towns. That is not the case,” continued Hinshaw. “I want to be clear that when you are looking at the LGA map, the numbers represented include surrounding area numbers, not just the individual town. “Our officials are reviewing the map and renaming Viking, Wainwright and any other affected areas to make it clear these are regional data and the cases are not all in one community. As a result of her statement, Ritchie said, “Viking is no longer being misrepresented.” Hinshaw made it clear that the local geographic area named ‘Viking’ included those rural areas surrounding the town in COVID stats. “It’s nice to hear the LGAs were decided a long time ago,” said Ritchie, before COVID-19 came along. With the number of active cases in the Viking LGA dropping from 67 last
week to two cases as of Aug. 11, Ritchie commented: “Clearly there was aggressive testing done,” which saw the numbers jump dramatically at that time. “They went from 33 to 67 active cases in only three days,” an indication that “all the results came back at once.” Now that there are only three active cases listed for Beaver County as a whole - two in Viking (Beaver County East) and one in Tofield (Beaver County West), Ritchie said this indicates that “all the results for the recovered cases came back at once, too.” He said this was a sign that, “getting tested is a positive thing.” But he is anxious to see the change in the online
map to clear things up for people. Ritchie had started the ball rolling by emailing the government about his concerns. The government requested a virtual meeting that included Assistant Deputy Minister of Pandemic Response Planning John Conrad and Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Marcia Johnson of AHS, among others. In the meantime, Ritchie also took the time to speak to Viking residents directly on their cooperation regarding COVID-19 protocols and practices in the community. “Thank you for everything you have been doing to keep yourself and others safe.”
Wainwright COVID cases surge, while Beaver almost fully recovered Patricia Harcourt Editor
The number of active cases of COVID19 in Viking (Beaver County East) geographic area (LGA) has dropped dramatically over last week’s statistics. There are just two active case remaining out of 67 that were reported last week by Alberta Health Services on its online interpretive map. In Tofield and area there is only one active case, although that is up from last week where none were reported. This means that in Beaver County there are just three active cases left of the
many COVID-19 cases that have occurred. M.D. of Wainwright No. 61 still has a watch status placed on it from last week due to a jump in cases over the past weekend. The M.D. now has 46 active cases out of 59 with 12 recovered. One person has died. Last week there were only eight active cases out of 18 with nine recovered. In Beaver County overall, there are now only three active cases out of a total of 82 who have had the virus. Of these 79 have recovered and there have been no deaths.
Within the county, newly renamed Viking (Beaver County East) had 74 cases, with two active and 72 recovered as of Aug. 11. The Tofield (Beaver County West) area has had eight cases with one currently active, seven recovered, and no deaths in either region. In the Central Zone, there have been 546 cases with 99 still active and 442 recovered. Of the active cases, 11 are in hospital but nobody is in intensive care as of Aug. 4. Dr. Hinshaw, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, reported that there were 108 new cases of the virus in Alberta on Aug. 7, 101 new cases on
Aug. 8, 48 new cases on Aug. 9 and 85 on Aug. 10. She also reported five more deaths that occurred over the past weekend. Overall, Alberta has had 11,772 cases of COVID-19. This breaks down to 1,004 active cases, 10,552 recovered cases, 62 cases in hospital, and 14 in intensive care. There have been 216 deaths as a result of the virus since the pandemic started in the province back in March. This includes 116 in the Calgary zone, 54 in the Edmonton zone, 21 in the North zone, 20 in the South zone and five in the Central zone. See COVID Cases P12