A man who worked at the Cargill meat packing plant in High River has died overnight from COVID-10, along with three other people across the province.
Some 360 workers from the plant have caught COVID-19 so far.
“There has also been spread in the community from beyond these workers, with 484 total cases linked to that outbreak,” Alberta’s chief medical officer Deena Hinshaw said Monday.
Many of the people live in surrounded communities to High River, such as Calgary. Many of the new cases in the Calgary zone over the weekend were linked to the High River outbreak.
Hinshaw said a dedicated team is working on outbreak control measures to help prevent the further spread of COVID-19 from the plant.
“There is a great deal of focus on controlling the spread linked to these networks, how ever many of the new cases that are currently being diagnosed were exposed up to two weeks ago before control measures were put in place so we will continue to see new cases linked to this outbreak over the coming days,” Hinshaw said.
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The chief medical officer said they are also focused on reducing the spread in other workplaces such as at JBS Foods where 67 cases have been confirmed, and at the Kearl Lake work camp, where 12 cases have been diagnosed in Alberta and eight in other provinces.
Alberta has run 100,000 tests for COVID-19 since the outbreak started, with 3,718 COVID-19 tests completed in the last 24 hours.
In the last 24 hours, the province has seen four deaths, bringing the provincial total to 59.
Two people who were living in long-term care died, along with the Cargill plant worker in High River and a man from the Edmonton zone.
“These are reminders of why we are collectively working to prevent spread of this virus," Hinshaw said.In the last 24 hours, 105 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed, bringing the total number of people in the province who have been confirmed to have the virus to 2,908. In all, 1,230 people have recovered.
In St. Albert, there are currently three active cases of COVID-19, while 24 people have recovered. In Sturgeon County, there have been a total of 10 cases, with nine recovered and one active case.
