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All but 10 of Alberta’s 138 new cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours are in the Calgary area, and two more elderly people have died from the dangerous virus, the province’s chief medical officer of health said Tuesday.

Calgary has outpaced the rest of the province in novel coronavirus infections, with about 66 per cent of Alberta’s total cases recorded in the city and surrounding area. Last week, the province widened testing criteria to include anyone in the Calgary area with possible symptoms of COVID-19.

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As of Tuesday, there have been 1,242 cases of COVID-19 in the Calgary area and just 402 in the Edmonton zone.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw said testing ramped up in Calgary “to identify opportunities to limit spread, given that this zone has consistently had the highest rates of illness.”

Hinshaw said Monday that about two per cent of tests in Alberta have come back positive over the past several weeks. But Tuesday’s test results show an uptick: 4.8 per cent of the 2,868 tests done in the past 24 hours were positive for COVID-19.