Health Minister Tyler Shandro (Photo: Government of Alberta)

By EverythingGP Staff

Citing rising hospitalizations

Alberta holding off on moving to Step 3 of relaunch

Mar 22, 2021 | 3:45 PM

Alberta’s Minister of Health Tyler Shandro says the province will not be moving to Step 3 of the relaunch plan.

The province is currently in Step 2, which was achieved after fewer than 450 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19. The benchmark for Step 3 is 300 hospitalizations.

While Alberta has been under the Step 3 threshold for a couple of weeks now, Shandro clarifies that the rule is “300 and declining”.

Numbers for hospitalizations and cases have been increasing in recent days, increasing by 16 over the last week to 280.

“Until today, we had seen seven straight days of growth of people in hospitals and that hasn’t happened since we had 40 days of increases that began October 30th. That was the start of the second wave,” said Shandro. “The decline we saw in January and early February has stopped.

“This is a problem, and a warning sign we must take seriously.”

Shandro says current expectations with recent daily case rates should see hospitalizations reach 300 in the province again, possibly by the end of this week.

“This is the safe move, this is the smart move, to make for our province now.”

Shandro adds he knows many Albertans will be disappointed with this decision.

“I know that Albertans are tired of having to worry about this virus and the risk to their families and loved ones, and wondering when life will get back to normal, but the reality is that given recent case numbers and the number of people in hospital due to COVID-19 is likely to go back over the 300 threshold in the next week, so it would be irresponsible and unfair to Albertans to ease measures now only to reinstate them days later.”

He adds that until more vaccines can be administered to lower the overall risk to the community. Shandro reiterated that COVID-19 is a threat to all age groups, not just seniors and the most vulnerable.

“Half of those who are in a hospital bed (280 as of March 21 )for COVID are under the age of 65, and almost 90 per cent of those in an ICU are under 65,” said Shandro.

Last week, the R-value for cases in Alberta was 1.14. Shandro explains that anything above one means that cases are growing.

Variants of COVID-19 now account for around 16 per cent of all active cases, up from about 10 per cent a couple of weeks ago.

“This is not the direction we want to be heading in.”

Step 3 includes the potential easing of measures on adult team sports, casinos, youth sports and recreation, indoor social gatherings, indoor seated events such as movie theatres, museums, zoos, and places of worship.

The full list of COVID-19 restrictions currently in effect and what is in each step of the relaunch plan can be found here.