By Emeka Nze
Alberta, a province in Canada, has declared a state of public health emergency, sending junior high and high school students home from school on Monday over rising cases of coronavirus, mandating mask-wearing in indoor workplaces in the Edmonton and Calgary regions only, and introducing new restrictions on indoor gatherings that eliminate many social gatherings.
Premier Jason Kenney, who has been quiet on the fight against COVID-19 in recent weeks — though he was self-isolating — made the announcement Tuesday, sounding grim as he read out details from correspondence from Albertans about their fears and grief. “This pandemic is a once-in-a-century public health challenge,” said Kenney.
Describing the restrictions as “the minimum restrictions needed right now,” Kenney announced a complete ban on indoor social gatherings, and capped outdoor gatherings at 10 people; weddings and funeral are also capped at 10 attendees and worship services — some have “flagrantly violated” public health rules, Kenney said — are capped at one-third of fire code limits.
Various other measures are coming, too, including closures of sports leagues, new rules for restaurants and bars — although in-person dining will remain — and restrictions of some sectors, such as hair salons, to by-appointment only. Students in all grades will be sent home Dec. 18, and the winter break will run a week longer, until Jan. 11.
“Every new restriction makes it tougher for business owners to stay open and for thousands of people to pay their bills,” said Kenney.
The measures will be evaluated in three weeks. “If these measures do not have meaningful impact — and that depends on how each one of us responds — we will be forced to take more drastic measures to protect the health-care system,” Kenney said.
The moves come after weeks of rising case counts, with a near-doubling in daily COVID-19 cases within the past week. Kenney announced 16 more deaths on Tuesday. In the past 24 hours there have been 1,115 new cases, and the province’s positivity rate is 8.3 per cent.
As of Monday afternoon, the province had more than 13,000 active cases, the most in the entire country, despite having fewer people than Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. Deaths have climbed close to 500, and more than 300 people are in hospital, more than 60 of them in intensive care units.
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s restrictions, there were calls from hundreds of doctors in the province for the government to implement new measures in order to keep the hospital system from collapsing under the strain. The United Conservative government has been reticent to implement further restrictions, citing the balance between the harms of a prolonged economic closure and the harms of the COVID-19 pandemic. Government ministers have praised the public health measures as the “lightest touch” in the country, allowing for economic re-opening ahead of many other jurisdictions.
-Nationalpost