{"id":241857,"date":"2021-05-04T17:52:58","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T14:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-albertas-covid-19-crisis-became-absolutely-frightening\/"},"modified":"2021-05-04T17:52:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T14:52:58","slug":"how-albertas-covid-19-crisis-became-absolutely-frightening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-albertas-covid-19-crisis-became-absolutely-frightening\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Alberta’s COVID-19 crisis became ‘absolutely frightening’"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How Alberta’s COVID-19 crisis became ‘absolutely frightening’<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n The province has the highest rate of active cases in Canada and could see as many as 4,000 new cases a day by May 22\n <\/div>\n
\n On Saturday, <\/span>hundreds of fans packed bleachers<\/span><\/a> just outside Bowden, Alta., for the \u201cNo More Lockdown Rally Rodeo.\u201d Few wore masks and the police made no effort to stop the event. That same day that Alberta <\/span>reported two new pandemic records<\/span><\/a>: 2,433 cases of COVID-19 and a test positivity rate of 11.9 per cent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also on that day, the province had more than double the per capita rate of active cases than second-place Ontario, according to <\/span>data crunched by CBC\u2019s Robson Fletcher<\/span><\/a>. And those cases have driven Alberta\u2019s seven-day per capita rate to a new record: It\u2019s now 440.5 per million population, more than any other province or state in North America; in contrast, hard-hit Ontario has a rate of 247.7 per million population.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of April, as non-emergency surgeries were <\/span>cut by 30 per cent<\/span><\/a> in the hotspots of Calgary, Edmonton and the North Zones, <\/span>hospitals were being briefed on triage procedures<\/span><\/a> should ICUs become overwhelmed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0COVID-19 in Canada: How our battle to stop the pandemic is going<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAbsolutely frightening,\u201d is how Dr. Noel Gibney, who spent four decades working in ICUs in the province, describes the current situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For a while after the second wave of cases subsided in February and into March, the situation in Alberta looked relatively good, at least on the surface. Hospitalizations were declining, as were the number of new cases. Then, as the province relaxed its public health measures, the number of COVID-19 cases started to go up, first slowly, then faster and faster as the more infectious variants of concern (VOCs) took hold in Alberta, just as they had done already in Ontario. \u201c<\/span>If you reopen too much or too soon, inevitably what has happ<\/a>ened was going to happen,\u201d says Gibney, a professor emeritus<\/span> at the department of critical care medicine at the University of Alberta. By the beginning of April, the <\/span>VOCs accounted for half of all cases in Alberta<\/span><\/a>. At that point, the rate of spread became exponential, doubling every seven days.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question that the limited restrictions that the government has put in place has made some difference, and if we were dealing just with the old, wild kind of virus, [they]<\/span> probably would have been enough to keep things in control,\u201d he says. But he thinks those restrictions aren\u2019t enough to deal with the VOCs, which are causing case levels to now double about every 20 days.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the VOC situation looks similar to that facing Ontario around a month ago, there are two big differences, Gibney says. \u201cOntario reopened [its economy after the second wave] from a higher baseline of cases per population than Alberta did.\u201d And that meant that Ontario\u2019s hospital system wasn\u2019t able to significantly reduce its COVID-19 patient load before being hit with a third wave of new admissions. In contrast, <\/span>Alberta was able to reduce hospitalizations<\/span><\/a> from more than 900 patients in late December to less than 250 in early March, while the number of COVID-19 patients needing ICU care dropped to below 40. So, while hospitalizations are increasing\u2014on the weekend, the number of COVID-19 patients in Alberta\u2019s <\/span>ICUs topped 155, more than the peak of the second wave<\/span><\/a>\u2014that level isn\u2019t yet as high, relatively speaking, as in Ontario.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0Year One: The untold story of the pandemic in Canada<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For Gibney, the other difference between the provinces is in the attitude of the governments. Both are led by populist premiers, but while Premier Doug Ford eventually put in place enough restrictions to start bending its epidemic curve, that action hasn\u2019t yet occurred in Alberta. \u201cOur government finds itself almost emotionally unable to do the hard work that is required to actually get the pandemic under control,\u201d he says. \u201cThe premier has come under intense pressure from his own supporters [to choose] the weak restrictions that he\u2019s put in place. So the question that I think has to be asked is, \u2018Will he have the courage to do what\u2019s necessary, even though it may actually lead to his eventually being replaced as leader of the party and premier?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Experts worry that Kenney is running out of time to make such a choice, like he eventually did for the two previous waves. While the government doesn\u2019t release pandemic projections, <\/span>modelling done by Gosia Gasperowicz<\/span><\/a>, a University of Calgary Ph.D. student, shows that Alberta is \u201con exactly the same steep upward trajectory as Ontario,\u201d and could see 4,000 daily cases by May 22 (it was <\/span>an average of 1,944 a day in the past week.)\u00a0<\/b>In addition, her projections show that COVID-19 ICU capacity is doubling every three weeks, meaning that those triage protocols may be needed in late May.\u00a0 For both Gasperowicz and Gibney, the current situation cannot be controlled through vaccinations alone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While acknowledging that<\/a> \u201ctoo many Albertans are ignoring the rules we have in place,\u201d Kenney is set to unveil new restrictions on Tuesday. Experts wonder if they will be tough enough to bend the epidemic curve.\u00a0\u201cIf we want to avoid the disastrous situation at the end of May, then we might have a week or 10 days at the most [for Kenney to act],\u201d Gibney says. \u201cBut beyond that, what\u2019s going to happen is going to happen regardless of what he does.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
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