Some people were not happy about last week's COVID-19 announcement.
Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, Dr Deena Hinshaw, has apologized for how last Wednesday’s press conference came off.
“I am sorry that the way I communicated about the planned changes to our COVID-19 response has caused feelings of confusion, fear or anger for some people. I am hearing that the message people received from my words was that I think COVID is over, and that people are being left on their own to deal with it. That was not my intended message,” Hinshaw wrote.
She explained in the released article that the province would be relying on a surveillance system that includes wastewater surveillance, clinical testing, sentinel surveillance in primary care, and outbreak testing to monitor trends and impacts.
Hinshaw touched on isolation mandates and testing.
“Testing every person with a runny nose or sore throat is an extraordinary measure that we cannot sustain, particularly through the respiratory virus season,” adding that while quarantine and testing were necessary during the beginning of the pandemic, it could only be justified due to having zero vaccine protection in the population.
Hinshaw also addressed the concerns that some have been having with sending kids back to school in the fall, particularly in children under 12 who cannot receive the vaccine. According to Hinshaw, the risk of ICU admission for children zero to nine years of age infected with COVID-19 was roughly that of flu seasons in previous years.
Current Update
The City of Grande Prairie now has 130 active cases of COVID-19. The County of Grande Prairie has 22 active cases of the virus.
There are 2,282 active cases in the province of Alberta, with 102 in hospital and 24 in intensive care.
The province has administered 5,355,254 doses of vaccine, 76.2 per cent of the eligible population has received one dose, while 66.2 per cent are now fully immunized.
Information provided by Allison Stephen/FortSaskOnline and the Government of Alberta