Alberta pleads for gatherings to cease

EDMONTON • The Alberta government is asking Edmontonians and Calgarians to stop hosting gatherings at home with people outside their immediate families or households, as the province announced more than 1,400 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 48 hours.

Hospitalization cases were also expected to rise in coming weeks, straining the province's health-care system.

Premier Jason Kenney, who was a mainstay of news updates about the pandemic back in the spring, joined Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province's chief medical officer of health, for Friday's press conference to make the announcement.

“I know this is an annoyance and a sacrifice,” said Kenney. “But here's the reality: If we don't take these kinds of simple measures and make these kinds of modest sacrifices to social life, the cases will continue to grow to the point where they grow out of control.”

The measure, Kenney said, is voluntary, but is a “strong request.”

“We're not going to be sending out police to monitor this,” said Kenney. “This is appealing to people to exercise personal and collective responsibility.”

Hinshaw announced on Thursday there had been 802 new cases in the previous 24-hour period, the largest such increase since the pandemic began. On Friday, heading into the weekend, the number of new cases was 609.

There are currently more than 6,000 active cases in Alberta, 171 people in hospital, including 33 people in ICU. Eight more people have died, bringing the total deaths in the province to 350.

On Thursday, Hinshaw said that in Edmonton and Calgary, 10 per cent of active COVID-19 cases were people who had worked while they had symptoms, while 7.5 per cent had attended a social gathering and nine per cent went to a store or business — despite repeated urgings that Albertans must self-isolate if they've tested positive for COVID-19.

Private gatherings and contact within households are responsible for about 40 per cent of all active cases in Edmonton and Calgary. The restrictions on social gatherings, with some exceptions, are limited to 15 people. On Friday, these restrictions were expanded beyond Edmonton and Calgary to several other municipalities around the province.

“If you can reduce your social circle ... now is the time to do it,” Hinshaw said. “It will take all of us working together and being as careful as possible to reverse this trend.

In a press conference on Thursday, Hinshaw announced another change in the province's COVID fight. "(Alberta Health Services) does not currently have the capacity to call every contact of every case in a timely way,” said Hinshaw.

Hinshaw said contact tracers would only notify contacts of confirmed cases if high-priority settings, such as continuing care facilities and schools, would be affected. Hinshaw said this will be the place until new contact tracers can be hired and trained.

In the spring, the province had only 50 contact tracers — there are now 800 people working at contact tracing, and the province is hiring another 380, Kenney said Friday.

The new measures come after weeks of increasing daily case counts in the province, and larger percentages of hospital beds set aside for COVID-19 patients becoming occupied. In parts of the province, other medical procedures such as ambulatory care visits and non-urgent surgeries and hospital transfers have been paused.

Jason Kenney