Everything you need to know about COVID-19 in Alberta on Saturday, Dec. 12

The latest:

• Sweeping newrestrictionsaimed atslowingthe spread of COVID-19 will beginSunday.
• Alberta reported 1,590new cases on Saturday,for a total of 20,072active cases, and a 7.9 per cent positivity rate down slightly from previous days.
• There are681people in hospital, 128in ICUs.
• Another 13deaths were reported, bringing the total to 697.
• As rising COVID-19 cases put pressure on Alberta's health-care system, up to 60 per cent of Edmonton-area surgeries will bedelayed and diagnostic imaging and other clinical support services willbe reduced by as much as 40 per cent.
• Alberta health-care workers on the front lines will be the first in the province to receive thePfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
• Starting next week, 3,900 doses will go toICU doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists and long-term care workers in a bid to keep both the workers and those under their care safe.
• Details on the vaccine and Alberta's plans to date can be found here.
• Indoor and outdoor social gatherings are nowprohibited, Premier Jason Kenney announced. People who live alone are limited toup to two close contacts for in-person visits.
• Masks are now mandatory across the province in all indoor workplace and facilities outside the home. Until now, Alberta had been the only province without a mask mandate.
• Starting Sunday, retail services and malls must reduce customer capacity to 15 per cent of fire code occupancy.
• Restaurants, pubs and bars will beclosed as of Sundayto in-person service. Takeout, delivery and curbside pickup are allowed.
• Hair salons, nail salons, casinos, bowling alleys, gyms, movie theatres, libraries and museums will be closed as of Sunday.
• Places of worship are limited to 15 per cent of fire code occupancy.
• Starting Sunday, all employees are required to work from home unless their employer determines they need to be at work in person.
• A full list of the new restrictions is available on the province's website.

• Alberta will triple its small and medium enterprise grants to $20,000, while lowering the eligibility criteria to 30 per cent of revenues lost retroactive to March.
• Alberta's vaccine news comes afterPrime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday morning thatseveral hundred thousand doses of the Pfizervaccine will be available in Canada before the end of the year shots primarily earmarkedfor long-term care home residents and the staffers working there.
• Military reservists are preparing for possible deployment in the Prairies as COVID-19 rates soar.

• An internal Alberta government document, obtained by CBC News, shows the province has been planning for more than a week to set up indoor field hospitals to treat 750 COVIDpatients.
• As of Saturday, Calgary had more than 7,100active cases and Edmonton had more than 9,500.

What you need to know today in Alberta

Sweeping new restrictions intended to curb the surge of COVID-19 in the province will take effect at midnight Sunday. They will remainin place at least for four weeks through Christmas and New Year's:

• Retail services and malls must reduce customer capacity to 15 per cent of fire code occupancy. Restaurants, pubs and bars are closed to in-person service. Takeout, delivery and curbside pickup are allowed.
• Hair salons, nail salons, casinos, bowling alleys, gyms, movie theatres, libraries and museums will be closed.
• Places of worship are limited to 15 per cent of fire code occupancy.
• All employees are required to work from home unless their employer determines they need to be at work in person.
• A full list of new measures is available on the province's website.

Alberta released a new ad campaign on Friday featuring a man intended to represent the COVID-19 virus at a party and at a holiday gathering.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province's chief medical officer of health, said the ads were intended to urge Albertans to not socially gather over the holidays.

"Our goal is to get people's attention, to help them see common situations from a different perspective, and as a result to influence their behaviour," Hinshaw said at a news conference.

"The campaign uses humour because the situation is serious and we need to use every tool at our disposal to reach all Albertans."

The province also plans topostpone many surgical procedures in the Edmonton area.

Hinshaw said on Tuesday that up to60 per cent of non-urgent scheduled surgeries that require a hospital stay will be postponed in the Edmonton zone.

Diagnostic imaging and other clinical support services willbe reduced by as much as 40 per cent, and ambulatory visits and procedures byas much as 70 per cent, according to Alberta Health Services.

"These will help ensure there is space to care for the critically ill patients who require care, both now and in the coming weeks," Hinshaw said.

Front-line health-care workers will receive the first 3,900doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine starting Dec. 16. The ICU doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists and long-term care staff will need to visit the vaccine delivery sites in Edmonton and Calgary to receive their first and second doses, which are given approximately one month apart.

"This early distribution is an important step in our continued fight against COVID-19but we can't take our foot off the gas," Health Minister Tyler Shandro said Tuesday, adding that it will be months before the majority of the population can be immunized.

The news comes afterPrime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday morning that up to 249,000doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine would be available in Canada before the end of the year.

Alberta reported 1,590new cases on Saturday,for a total of 20,072active cases, and a 7.9 per cent positivity rate down slightly from previous days.There are681people in hospital, 128in ICUs.

Another 13deaths were reported, bringing the total to 697.

On Tuesday, Alberta announcedthe strictest restrictions of the entire pandemic in an effortto slow the surging COVID-19cases and hospitalizations in the province.

"If you gathered everyone who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 together, it would be the fifth largest city in Alberta," said Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health.

"Every case is a person we are all at risk of COVID-19, we are all impacted by the toll it is taking on our health system."

Hinshaw said Wednesday it's important to follow the spirit of the restrictions if a situation is unclear, rather than working to find loopholes.

"If you are unsure about what to do, please err on the side of caution and make the safest choice," she said.

Effective immediately,indoor and outdoor social gatherings are prohibited. People who live alone are limited toup to two close contacts for in-person visits.Masks are now mandatory across the province in all indoor workplace and facilities outside the home. Until now, Alberta had been the only province without a mask mandate.

Hinshaw said the target of the new restrictions is not to reach zero COVID-19 cases, something other jurisdictions have aimed for, but to no longer have the health-care system be at risk.

"These are decisions that we have arrived at not as a first resort but as a last resort, to protect lives and to preserve our health-care system," Premier Jason Kenney said.

Kenney said it's with great reluctance Albertans are being asked to limit holiday gatheringsto the members of their household, or to two close contacts for people who live by themselves.

"We simply cannot let this Christmas turn into a tragedy for many families," he said.

With a large swath of Alberta teachers delivering lessons online, the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) says teachers are confused about why new COVID-19 measures including a work-from-home mandate are not being applied to school staff and teachers when possible.

ATA president, Jason Schilling saysunder these continuously changing and increasingly stressful months, teachers continue to do all they can to meet the needs of their students.

"But, they feel like there's mixed messages that are being sent by government to work from home where you can and then be told, 'except if you work in school, you need to work in your building,'" he said.

Schilling saidteachers especially those teaching Grade7 to 12 students who were all moved online last week feel they've got the ability to work at home, but still are not allowed.

A new poll suggests that most people in most provinces feel their governments have done a good job dealing with the pandemic. Just not in Alberta or Manitoba.

The poll released Thursday by the Angus Reid Institutefound that 57 per cent of respondents believe Jason Kenney's government has done a poor job in its response to the COVID-19 emergency, while 41 per cent think it's done a good job for Albertans.

Brian Pallister's government in Manitoba fared even worse in the poll, with 67 per cent saying that province has done a poor job and just 31 per cent saying a good job has been done.

By comparison, respondents in Quebec rated their government's pandemic response 62 per cent good to 36 per cent poor. In Ontario, sentiment is more evenly split, 55 per cent good to 44 per cent poor.

Kenney is defending his government's rollout of the new restrictions, even though some medical experts have been calling for the province to implement such rules for several weeks.

Kenney repeatedly stressed Tuesday how difficult it was for him and his government to impose restrictions they knew would severely damage small businesses.

He also saidAlberta's balanced response to the pandemic was among the best in the world.

"The instinct of some to shut everything down from the beginning would be devastating on the livelihoods of countless Albertans," Kenney said.

"Alberta, through most of the past nine months, had lower levels of confirmed cases of hospitalizations and COVID fatalities than the other large Canadian provinces, all of the U.S. states and almost all of the European countries, with generally less stringent restrictions."

Opposition Leader Rachel Notleysaid the premier should have acted a month ago when doctors had called for a lockdown, topreventunnecessary deaths and hospitalizations.

"The premier acted like he didn't have a choice. But let's be clear, he had many choices, many opportunities, to act decisively," she said.

Business owners and employees across Calgary are digesting the impacts of Alberta's widespreadnew restrictions. Ernie Tsu, a board member with the Alberta Hospitality Association and owner of Trolley 5 pub, saidthe measures area hard hit to restaurants and bars right before the holidays.

• Alberta imposes tough new restrictions in bid to curb soaring COVID-19 infections

"It's going to be very tough for us to have to look at our staff, as we have to lay off coming around the corner here. Christmas is usually the best season for every restaurant and local pub," Tsu said.

Solo Diallo, co-owner of Mumbai Dakar in Edmonton, said he worries whether his restaurant will survive, but still supports the new measures.

"We'll just try to outlast and then we'll see how far we can go," he told CBC's Edmonton AM on Wednesday.

Alberta is expanding its small and medium business relaunch grant, to make up to 15,000 more businesses eligible for funding. Businesses can now receive 15 per cent of pre-pandemic monthly revenues up to a maximum of $15,000.

The program is also lowering its threshold from businesses who experienced 40 per cent revenue loss to 30 per cent revenue loss, retroactive to March.

Additional business supports are available through the federal government.

Enforcement against those flouting publichealth regulations has increased in Calgary. Since the city's mask bylaw went into effect at the beginningof August, 21 tickets have been issued, six of those since Dec. 2, "including those resulting from organized gatherings or protests that continue to be investigated,"according to a city news release issued late Thursday.

Calgary police and bylaw officers say they've issued a total of 18 tickets for violations against the Alberta Public Health Act since Nov. 24 seven of those since Monday.

Click on the map below to zoom in or out on specific local geographic areas in Alberta and find out more about COVID-19 there:

Here isthe regional breakdown of active cases reported on Saturday:

• Calgary zone: 7,127, down from 7,166 reportedonFriday(23,567 recovered).
• Edmonton zone: 9,548, down from9,570 (23,329 recovered).
• North zone: 1,236, down from 1,240(3,906 recovered).
• South zone: 589, up from 580(3,851 recovered).
• Central zone: 1,522, up from 1,502(2,831 recovered).
• Unknown: 50, down from 71(129 recovered).

Find out which neighbourhoods or communities have the most cases, how hard people of different ages have been hit, the ages of people in hospital, how Alberta compares to other provinces and more in: Here are the latest COVID-19 statistics for Alberta and what they mean

What you need to know today in Canada:

As of Saturday morning, Canada's COVID-19 case count stood at448,841, with 73,297of those cases considered active.A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC's reporting stood at 13,251.

Public health officials are urging Canadians to dramatically limit their contacts with other people as the country continues on a "rapid growth trajectory" for COVID-19 cases and the holiday season nears.

This week's approval of a COVID-19 vaccine and a rollout plan unfolding has given optimism to many Canadians there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Releasingnew modelling from the Public Health Agency of Canada(PHAC), Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said if Canadians maintain their current contact levels, more than 12,000 new cases would be recorded daily by January.

If people increase their level of contacts, that number could surge to more than 30,000 cases daily by January, according to the modelling sheets.

A bug affecting Canada's COVID Alert app has not been entirely fixed as federal officials first announced, leaving an unknown number of iPhone users still without exposure notifications.

Last week, CBC Newsreporteda glitch prevented the app from functioning properly on some smartphones for much of November. The federal agency developing the app initially said an update released on Nov. 23 fixed the problem.

A Health Canada representative has now acknowledged the fix only solved the problem on Android devices, and "there are some instances of something similar happening" on iPhones. The glitch leaves open the possibility that some users with an Apple device have not received notice to seek a COVID-19 test or self-isolate in a timely manner.

Health officials inBritish Columbiareportedon Friday reported737 new cases of COVID-19and 11 more deaths.

Those numbers came one day after the provincereported 28 additional COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, a single-day high that Dr. Bonnie Henry described as "one of the most tragic days we have had yet." Speaking at a briefing, the provincial health officersaid all but two of the deaths were seniors who were in long-term care homes.

Saskatchewanreported 246 new cases of COVID-19and four additional deaths on Friday, and active cases dropped to4,547.

Health Minister Paul Merriman saidresidents will have to wait until next week to learn what public health orders will be in place over the holidays. He saidthe Saskatchewan Party government is ultimately responsible for any decisions made, but it works with the chief medical health officer, who presents them with recommendations.

InManitoba, the province's chief public health officer on Friday saidthe provincial death rate from COVID-19 has increased by more than nine times since Thanksgiving. The provinceannounced 447 more infections and 14 deaths.

Ontarioreported1,848 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday along with45 additional deaths, one day after hitting a new single-day high with 1,983 cases of COVID-19.

Two more regions will enter lockdownon Monday.Bars, shopping malls and gyms in Windsor-Essex and York Region will be closed, andindoor dining at restaurants will bebanned.

InQuebec,health officials reported 1,713new cases of COVID-19 on Friday and 53additional deaths, bringing the total death toll in the hard-hit province to 7,435. Hospitalizations stood at 871, with 123people in intensive care units, according to aprovincial dashboard.

The province faced scrutiny Thursday for how its long-term care system handled the first wave of the pandemic. Anombudsperson's reportsaid Quebec's long-term care system failed to ensure the safety and dignity of residents as the virus first spread last winter and spring.

In Atlantic Canada,Nova Scotiareportednine new cases of COVID-19on Friday, whileNewfoundland and Labradorreportedone new case. There were no new cases reported inPrince Edward Islandon Friday.

Across the North,Nunavutreported 16 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, all of whichare in the community of Arviat, bringing the total number of active cases there to 56.

Self-assessment and supports:

With winter cold and influenza season approaching, Alberta Health Services will prioritize Albertans for testing who have symptoms, and those groups which are at higher risk of getting or spreading the virus.

General asymptomatictesting is currently unavailable for people with no known exposure to COVID-19.

Those who test positive will be asked to use the online COVID-19 contact tracing tool, so that their close contacts can be notified by text message.

The province says Albertans who have returned to Canada from other countries must self-isolate. Unless your situation is critical and requires a call to 911, Albertans are advised to call Health Link at 811 before visiting a physician, hospital or other health-care facility.

If you have symptoms, even mild, you are to self-isolate for at least 10 days from the onset of symptoms, until the symptoms have disappeared.

You can find Alberta Health Services' latest coronavirus updates here.

The province also operates a confidential mental health support line at 1-877-303-2642 and addiction help line at 1-866-332-2322, both available 24 hours a day.

Online resources are available for advice on handling stressful situations and ways to talk with children.

There is a 24-hour family violence information line at 310-1818 to get anonymous help in more than 170 languages, and Alberta's One Line for Sexual Violence is available at 1-866-403-8000, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.