Photo: Government of Alberta

By Shane Clausing

restriction exemption program

Kenney hints at the potential end of Restriction Exemption Program in the coming months

Feb 1, 2022 | 5:44 PM

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says the Restriction Exemption Program (REP) could be a thing of the past in the coming months.

During his news conference on February 1, Kenney said it seems the province reached the peak of the Omicron COVID-19 wave two weeks ago, however, added hospitalizations still remain high and that we are not out of the woods just yet.

“We continue to monitor these numbers very closely,” said Kenney.

While the Omicron wave is still having an impact on the province’s hospital system, Kenney says if the number of hospitalizations continues to fall, his team will look into slowly removing restrictions.

As of January 31, there were 1,585 people in hospital with COVID-19, with 109 of those patients in the ICU.

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“As I have said before, once we’ve seen sustained COVID pressure (decline) on the hospitals I am looking forward to being able to make decisions looking towards the relaxation of public health measures at that time,” stated Kenney.

“I believe that will happen in this month of February, but with the overall trends, I am very optimistic that we will be able to move forward with meaningful relaxation of public health measures this month, including the elimination of the Restriction Exemption Program.”

Kenney added if and when they do decide to make a decision on lifting restrictions, it will likely be done in a phased plan as opposed to lifting everything all at once.

“We don’t have specific metrics, we are going to be looking at all of the overall trends altogether. Of course, the infection trends with respect to (test) positivity (rate), but more specifically the hospitalization numbers,” he explained.

“Scenarios we are considering is something like three phases in relaxation of measures to ensure we don’t trip back into positive growth and additional pressure on the hospitals starting from a pretty high baseline. We will do this in a thoughtful and careful way driven by the data.”