Infectious disease doctor says indicators not looking good for Step 3 of Alberta’s relaunch

A decision on whether Alberta will move to Step 3 of its reopening plan could come as early as Monday, but one infectious diseases specialist said things are not looking good.

Dr. Ameeta Singh, an infectious disease specialist with the University of Alberta, said the numbers in regards to case numbers, hospitalizations and ICU admissions have plateaued.

“Honestly I would be surprised if we did move to Step 3 at this point.”

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3:32 Will Alberta move to Step 3 of reopening?

Step 3 would allow facilities such as museums, art galleries, theatres and casinos to reopen and would allow indoor social gatherings with restrictions. Only some sectors in Step 2 of reopening were initially allowed to open earlier this month; the province completely entered Step 2 on March 8.

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said a variety of factors, such as positivity rate, case counts and R value will be looked at.

“Given our trends and variant cases and the increase in positivity over the past few days, of course that does need to be considered. But the final decisions are made by cabinet with looking at multiple different factors,” she said Wednesday.

0:55 Most of B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant’s spread is community-based: Hinshaw

Hinshaw was then asked what her personal comfort level would be with moving to the next stage of reopening.

She referenced how several countries in Europe where the B.1.1.7. variant, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, has become dominant and did have a high second wave are experiencing a “very significant” third wave, including a spike in deaths.

“We’re seeing other provinces in Canada that are seeing rapid acceleration of cases. We need to make sure we are watching closely other jurisdictions and considering all of those factors in any potential easings,” Hinshaw said.

“Given that, again, we are in this critical time where the variant is rising and we don’t yet have enough vaccine on board to protect those who are most vulnerable.”

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Hinshaw said a comparison of serology results with COVID-19 tests that are PCR positive show that the province is picking up about one in four cases of the disease.

Alberta recorded 50 additional cases of variants on Wednesday, bringing the total to 1,097. Variant cases make up 11 per cent of active cases in the province.

Alberta recorded 479 total new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday, with a positivity rate of about 4.7 per cent.

There were 262 people in hospital with COVID-19 on Wednesday, 44 of whom were being treated in intensive care.

At an unrelated news conference on Thursday, Premier Jason Kenney was asked whether Albertans can expect to move into Step 3 of reopening on Monday.

Kenney said cabinet will be reviewing advice from the chief medical officer of health over the next few days.

He then pointed to the Path Forward plan released in February that indicated the key metric for moving to the next step was hospitalization numbers. Step 3 requires less than 300 hospitalizations.

“We have been at under 300 hospitalizations now for maybe about a month, maybe it’s more like five weeks, and so it’s been pretty stable,” he said.

“It’s clear things have plateaued. We have stopped seeing the decline in new daily cases, total active cases and hospitalizations but they have been stable. Of course there have been little blips up and little blips down but basically the situation has been relatively stable.”

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Kenney said there is concern over growth of the variants of concern but noted it is not yet the dominant strain in the province.

“We’re going to have to take a look at all that data but our key benchmark is that we’re at about 250 to 260 folks in hospital with COVID, only about 40 in ICU. We have enormous flex capacity in the health system and we are, everyday, vaccinating more and more of the vulnerable.”