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Photo by Ian Kucerak / 00090333A

Oil and gas work sites have been deemed essential services, allowing operations to continue during the ongoing pandemic. Appearing alongside Hinshaw Wednesday, Premier Jason Kenney said it would be complicated to entirely close oil and gas camps, especially in situ sites, as halting work could ruin companies’ reserves.

“In some cases, it can cause permanent damage to their reservoir and with that, lose or jeopardize billions of dollars of assets which are absolutely central to the operation of the provincial economy,” said Kenney.

Kenney said he is meeting with the province’s emergency management committee of cabinet tomorrow to further discuss what can be done to protect camp workers.

Hinshaw also provided an update on a COVID-19 outbreak at a meat processing facility plant in High River, approximately 65 kilometres south of Calgary. She said there is no risk to public safety from outbreaks at food plants as the virus is not foodborne. However, as a result of the outbreak, a new testing site will be opened in the community.

There were 126 new cases recorded in the province Wednesday, bringing the total to 1,996, but the numbers are preliminary due to a service disruption at AHS that shut down the data feed from the provincial lab, Hinshaw said. The data feed is expected to be restarted before Thursday’s update.

Hinshaw was unable to provide an update on the number of recoveries in the province due to the technical issues. She expects to announce new numbers Thursday.

No new deaths were recorded, leaving that total at 48. There were 2,853 tests completed in the last 24 hours in Alberta, and 85,502 to date.

Expanded testing to all Albertans showing symptoms of COVID-19, such as a fever, a cough or sore throat, is being attributed to a jump in numbers over the past two days. However, Hinshaw said the number of hospitalizations in Alberta has remained steady, at close to 40 people admitted while infection numbers rise.

“That number is a function both of new admissions to hospital as well as how long people stay in hospital,” said Hinshaw. “What we need to do is look at not just those hospitalized on a day-to-day basis, but what the new hospitalizations are and what that trend tells us about transmissions.”

In Canada, there are 28,381 total cases of COVID-19 and 1,010 related deaths, the latest numbers from Health Canada show. Globally, there are currently 1,914,916 confirmed cases and 123,010 COVID-19 related deaths according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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