Check against delivery.

Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon everyone.

We have now administered approximately 532,000 doses of vaccine in the province.

As I mentioned yesterday, if you are eligible for the vaccine in Phase 2A, there are appointments ready and waiting, so you can get the vaccine within a week.

If you haven’t booked yet, please do so now.

Turning to today’s update, over the last 24 hours, we identified 764 new cases of COVID-19, and completed about 14,000 tests.  

Our positivity rate currently stands at about 5.4%.

We have identified 191 additional cases of variants of concern.

Variants currently represent about 21% of our active cases.  

There are now active alerts or outbreaks in 365 schools, which represents 15% of all schools in the province.

There are now 294 people in hospital being treated for COVID-19, including 55 in the ICU.

Three new deaths were reported to Alberta Health in the last 24 hours.

My condolences go to the loved ones of these individuals, and anyone who is mourning a death right now.

After a year of this pandemic, all of these numbers I have just shared can seem like dry facts.

I want to remind all of us that each of these numbers is a person.

These are people who have died. These are people who are in hospital or ICU, and people who have tested positive and are navigating the illness as best they can.

I know that we are all so tired of this pandemic, it might feel like the actions that we take on any given day don’t really matter to those around us.

It’s easy to forget that our actions have a real life impact on people we care about, as well as people we may never meet.

A year into this, we all know what we need to do to slow the spread of COVID-19. But I know we’re also tired of doing these things.

It has been a long, hard 13 months for everyone, but we can’t give up now.

We’ve made it too far and we are too close to getting through this.

Each of us needs to look at ways that we can help slow or reverse the growth.

This means being extra cautious and making the safe choice tonight, tomorrow and in the weeks ahead.

The choices we make now will determine if cases are still growing in the days after Easter.

Spring is here, and I ask that all of us use that fact for encouragement to hang on for just a few months longer to the actions that we know will protect those around us and our communities.

Thank you and I’m happy to take questions.