EDMONTON Red Deer has set a record for COVID-19 case numbers. On Jan. 31, there were 187 active cases of COVID-19 in the City of Red Deer. As of Thursday, the city has 562 active cases which is a 200 per cent increase since the end of last month. “The fact that we are now very high on a per-capita basis as well as amongst the highest municipalities in the province of Alberta is deeply concerning,” said Red Deer’s Mayor Tara Veer. For the most part, other municipalities have seen a downwards trajectory in active cases, but Red Deer has headed in the opposite direction. As of Thursday, Edmonton has 720 active cases meaning Red Deer only has 158 fewer cases than a city with 10 times its population.
City officials are cautioning Red Deerians that if COVID-19 cases remain as high as they are there we may not reopen from public health restrictions as quickly as the rest of the province.
Red Deer has 559 active cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, down slightly from Monday’s record total of 565. Nearly 75 per cent of the 745 active cases in the Central Zone are in Red Deer.
While numbers across much of the province have trended downward in recent weeks, Red Deer has seen its active case count triple in less than a month.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Tara Veer again urged Red Deerians to remain vigilant and do their part to curb spread of the virus.
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Locked in a cell all but a few minutes a day, Wayne Wilcox has to improvise to pass the time.
“There’s a table that’s in my cell,” said Wilcox, an inmate at the Edmonton Remand Centre. “I drew a chessboard on there. Me and my cellmate play chess once in awhile.” With no access to game sets, he molded his own pieces using toilet paper and toothpaste.
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“It took a while to make, but we’ve got nothing but time.”
Wilcox knows how to do time. The inmate at the centre of a landmark Alberta habeas corpus case, Wilcox previously spent nearly two years in solitary confinement at the remand.
Nevertheless, Wilcox says he and his fellow inmates locked down around the clock to try to contain the jail’s COVID outbreak are struggling.
“You can see it, it’s causing issues for people,” said Wilcox. “Like, one day they’ll be they’ll be happy-go-lucky, going around talking to people as much as you can, anyway. And then even later that day, all of a sudden, they just switch, now they’re just mad.”
“It took a while to make, but we’ve got nothing but time.”
Wilcox knows how to do time. The inmate at the centre of a landmark Alberta habeas corpus case, Wilcox previously spent nearly two years in solitary confinement at the remand.
Nevertheless, Wilcox says he and his fellow inmates locked down around the clock to try to contain the jail’s COVID outbreak are struggling.
“You can see it, it’s causing issues for people,” said Wilcox. “Like, one day they’ll be they’ll be happy-go-lucky, going around talking to people as much as you can, anyway. And then even later that day, all of a sudden, they just switch, now they’re just mad.”