Kenney, Shandro and Schweitzer all slated to appear at Tuesday’s COVID-19 briefing

Casinos, gyms and dine-in service at restaurants will be shut-down, all outdoor social gatherings will be banned and masks will be mandatory across Alberta in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, Premier Jason Kenney announced Tuesday.

Retail services, shopping malls and places of worship must also reduce capacity to 15 per cent of fire code occupancy.

The ban on social gatherings and masking mandate are effective immediately while all other measures will come into effect at midnight on Sunday. They will be in effect for at least four weeks and apply to the entire province.

Indoor gatherings remain prohibited as well.

Kenney said hospitals will run out of capacity if the virus is allowed to spread at current growth rates without stronger measures.

“We know that hundreds, or potentially thousands more Albertans could die” he said.

Kenney called the decision a “last resort” in an effort to save lives and protect the health-care system.

“We are now at a place where viral transmission is so widespread in the community, that it does not any longer matter how careful business operators are,” he said.

The suite of new restrictions came as Alberta reported 1,727 new cases of COVID-19 Tuesday, bringing the total number of active cases in the province to 20,388.

There are 654 people in hospital and, of those, 112 are in the intensive care unit.

The provincial death toll is now at 640 after nine more deaths were reported.

More to come.