Concern had arrived but the virus was still a week away

One year ago in the final week of February Alberta began recognizing the possibility of COVID-19 arriving here from countries other than China.

“Going forward we are expanding our testing protocol to include ... Hong Kong, Singapore, Iran, South Korea, Japan and Italy,” said Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, on Feb. 26, 2020.

Travellers from these areas are “not required to self-isolate” unless they have returned from China’s Hubei Province, she said. This was the same approach being adopted across Canada.

“The fact is the global situation is changing rapidly,” she said a year ago. “Although China continues to have the highest number of cases the spread of this virus to new countries is concerning.”

Hinshaw says there were still no probable nor confirmed cases of COVID-19 virus in Alberta and the risk was still considered “low.”

Across the world there is a “high risk for the potential of it becoming a pandemic” but we are not there yet, she said at the time.

“This is a quickly evolving situation and advice can change as more information becomes available,” said Hinshaw.

She assured Albertans the province was continuing to make preparations is case COVID-19 arrived.

It was in this last week of February that Albertans first heard talk of good habits to prevent getting COVID. People were advised to stay at home if they felt sick, cover coughs and sneezes, regularly wash hands and avoid touching their face with unwashed hands. At this stage a safe distance from someone who was coughing or sneezing was considered to be one metre, according to media reports at the time.

By March 2 Hinshaw also revealed that Alberta had already carried out of total of 173 COVID-19 tests and all were negative. The test results had shown other flu viruses in some cases, she said.

Alberta was still only doing COVID tests on people who had travelled to the countries mentioned above and if they developed symptoms that had the potential to be COVID-19.

Within another week the number of tests would virtually double and the first cases of COVID-19 were in the province.

The News will bring you that story next week.