Alberta’s use of British COVID-19 data was a miscalculation


SEPTEMBER 6, 2021

The Alberta government’s recent approach to COVID-19, ending nearly all public-health measures over the summer and refusing to change course as infections rose, was based on an optimistic principle: that vaccines changed the pandemic so dramatically. Given that the province could withstand a season. Significant increase in new cases without worrying about hospitals being overwhelmed.

Premier Jason Kenney and his chief medical officer of health, Dina Hinshaw, pointed to figures out of Britain as evidence that infections were “disrupted” with dire consequences; In other words, the spike in COVID-19 cases will no longer result in the same increase in hospitalizations. But Mr Kenny was forced to admit last week that those predictions did not come to pass in Alberta – a miscalculation that is now pushing hospital admissions to the peak of any previous wave and putting the health care system in a shambles. Threatens to bring it close to breaking point.

Experience in Alberta, where the government prides itself on imposing fewer pandemic restrictions than other provinces and recently urged the public to stop viewing COVID-19 as an emergency, has prompted other governments to take public-health measures. can serve as a warning for thinking of giving up altogether. . Experts say too few people have been vaccinated – not only in Alberta, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, but elsewhere in Canada – to skip public-health measures and act like that the pandemic is over.

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In Alberta, that realization prompted the government to act on Friday, announcing the return of a provincewide mask mandate and a curfew on the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants. The government is also paying anyone who hasn’t yet received their first or second dose of the vaccine $100 so they can eventually get a shot. The government previously delayed plans to end widespread testing, contact tracing and mandatory isolation.

The condition of hospitals in the province is deteriorating rapidly. Hospital and intensive care admissions have more than doubled in the past two weeks, and newly released modeling suggests these numbers could surpass their previous peak within weeks. On Friday, the province’s ICU beds were 95 percent full. Alberta has the highest rate of COVID-19 infections and hospital admissions per capita in the country.

Mr Kenny had repeatedly pointed to Britain defending Alberta’s approach. When infections spiked in Britain over the summer, hospital admissions did not increase as much. Hospital admissions rose in the UK in July and August, but government data shows they have been far below any previous peaks.

“Unfortunately, this has not been the Alberta experience,” Kenny said on Friday.

“Vaccines isolate individuals from severe outcomes dramatically at the individual level, but because of the large group of people who have no vaccine protection, we have seen the delta variant spread widely and in unvaccinated adults. gives serious results at very high rates.

Dean Carlen, a professor at the University of Victoria who is part of the BC COVID-19 Modeling Group, said hospitalizations in Alberta are rising slightly faster than in previous waves. The modeling group, which is also releasing estimates for Alberta, was warning that this would happen.

“There was really no basis to believe that this would be decoupling,” Prof. Carlen said.

He said it had been clear for some time that Britain was an outsider. He said there is significant and predictable pressure on their health care systems after a surge in infections in other jurisdictions in Europe and the United States.

Pro. Karlen also pointed out that most new infections are in unvaccinated people, so there was no reason to believe they wouldn’t end up in the same hospital as before.

“The situation has not really changed dramatically in any way to suggest that the demand for hospitalization will not be as high as it was before,” he said.