There were another 773 new cases of COVID-19 Tuesday, along with five more deaths.

According to Alberta Health Services, Foothills County has 39 cases while Okotoks has 34, Vulcan County has 79, the MD of Willow Creek 12 and High River is up to eight.

High River remains the only local municipality not included in the enhanced measures announced by the Province last Thursday, November 12.

Some people have compared COVID-19 to the flu but Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health says that's not right.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw says so far over 1.1 million Albertans have already received their flu shot compared to 940,000 at this time last year...

"It is important to remember several differences between COVID-19 and influenza. An illustrative example is we have had 49 acute care COVID outbreaks in just seven and a half months with 42 deaths linked to these outbreaks," she says. "This is despite extraordinary measures to prevent spread in the community and in the hospital. This is far worse than the worst outbreak numbers related to influenza in the past five years, 40 outbreaks with 13 deaths in a full year."

She points out last year there were almost 8,470 lab confirmed cases of the flu and 41 influenza related deaths.

Dr. Hinshaw commended schools for the work they're doing to keep the number of cases as low as possible.

"As children can mimic adults, and parents know this happens at inopportune moments, our schools mimic what's happening in the community. This means that when we drive community transmission down we will see this reflected in school numbers.

Foothills Composite high school in Okotoks and Willow Creek Composite in Claresholm are the only schools listed on the Province's school outbreak site with two to four cases each. 

Questions, comments or story ideas? e-mail news@highriveronline.com