UCP CREATED USELESS ABAPP DUPLICATING FEDAPP
Madeline Smith
Madeline Smith
© Provided by Calgary Herald Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi urged Calgarians to increase their vigilance as COVID-19 numbers surge in the city. Nenshi spoke on Wednesday, October 28, 2020.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi is calling for the provincial government to bring the federal contact tracing app to Alberta as COVID-19 cases spike.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi is calling for the provincial government to bring the federal contact tracing app to Alberta as COVID-19 cases spike.
Calgary’s mayor said Wednesday he has “no idea” what the holdup is in making the COVID Alert app available locally. The app lets people report a COVID diagnosis in eight provinces and, if it’s downloaded on your phone, also notifies you of possible exposure. The app works in Quebec and Ontario, which were both hard hit by COVID, but Alberta is still waiting.
As of Wednesday, 140 people in the Alberta Health Services Calgary zone have died from COVID-19.
“I don’t want any more,” Nenshi said.
“And, yeah, the federal app might not be perfect . . . but it’s something. We know the provincial app doesn’t work properly on most devices. We know people aren’t using it at all. So let’s take what we’ve got and make the job of those contact tracers easier.”
Active COVID cases in Alberta now sit at 4,793 after the province announced 410 new cases Wednesday. Daily case counts recently have regularly been above 400, and occasionally above 500. There are currently more active cases in the province than there were at the height of the first wave in the spring.
There are 1,788 active infections in the Calgary zone, compared to 2,245 in the Edmonton zone. The 410 new positive cases were identified from 10,631 tests — a 3.9 per cent positivity rate.
Alberta Health announced four more deaths Wednesday, including one in Calgary: a woman in her 90s linked to the outbreak at the Revera Mount Royal long term care home.
In Edmonton, a man in his 80s and a woman in her 90s linked to the outbreak at the Edmonton General Care Centre died, as well as another man in his 80s from the AHS Edmonton zone.
On Monday, Alberta announced new mandatory public health measures after 1,440 new cases were identified over three days. In Calgary and Edmonton, there’s now a 15-person limit on all social and family gatherings where people are “mixing and mingling.”
'These numbers are scary': CEMA chief raises alarm about rising COVID-19 cases
Nenshi and Calgary Emergency Management Agency Chief Tom Sampson said they welcomed the new rules, and stressed it’s critical to follow them amid the “extremely concerning” spike in numbers.
“Social contact is a major contributor to those higher rates of infection,” Sampson said. “We need to tighten up our bubbles and sit together in our smaller cohorts.”
Sampson has also called for the federal contact tracing app to come to Alberta.
The provincial government said in August that Alberta would adopt the federal contact tracing app after months of issues with the provincial app, ABTraceTogether. For that app to work properly, users on Apple devices had to leave it running in the foreground with their phones unlocked at all times, an issue that led to concerns about privacy and practicality .
Nenshi added that he heard reports that United Conservative ministers had mocked the federal app in the legislature Tuesday as “Trudeau’s app.” The Hansard transcript of Tuesday’s Question Period doesn’t have a record of such a comment, but it was reported as part of heckling in the chamber.
Nenshi said he’s concerned about “politicization of public health.”
“Stop it. We don’t need that kind of partisanship here,” Nenshi said. “We’ve got to keep people safe, and I just hope that we go ahead and sign off on it as soon as possible.”
Health Minister Tyler Shandro told reporters Wednesday that the delay comes down to making sure the 247,000 people who already downloaded Alberta’s contact tracing app can be “transitioned” to the federal one.
“It only works if we have a certain amount of people who are going to be downloading it,” he said. “We need, for this to be effective in Alberta, for there to be a good base of downloads. That’s why we’re having that conversation with (the federal government) right now to make sure that transition is smooth.”
© Gavin Young/Postmedia Calgary Emergency Management Agency Chief Tom Sampson urged Calgarians to increase their vigilance as COVID-19 numbers surge in the city. Sampson spoke on Wednesday, October 28, 2020.
Nenshi and Sampson held a joint news conference on COVID at Calgary’s emergency operations centre for the first time in months. They said they would start speaking to the public more regularly again until the situation is more under control.
Sampson said Calgary’s effective reproduction number sits at 1.35, which means COVID numbers are multiplying “faster than we can afford.” For the virus to be under control, the measure needs to be lower than one.
The mayor noted some European countries are now returning to strict measures to contain the virus — in France, President Emmanuel Macron announced a second national lockdown Wednesday.
“We cannot get there. We need to help these businesses succeed,” Nenshi said.
He urged Calgarians to keep following advice that’s been in place for months now — wash or sanitize your hands frequently, wear a face covering in public, keep a two-metre distance from other people and keep your social “bubble” of people you don’t live with very small.
Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard tested positive for COVID-19 last week, and Nenshi said she told him she caught it from a small family gathering for Thanksgiving.
But, he added, she also said that because she’d been so vigilant about taking precautions with anyone she’d been in contact with, no one she’d seen within the two weeks before she started isolating tested positive.
“We have the ability to do that. It actually makes a difference for us to be thoughtful and careful.”
masmith@postmedia.com
Nenshi and Sampson held a joint news conference on COVID at Calgary’s emergency operations centre for the first time in months. They said they would start speaking to the public more regularly again until the situation is more under control.
Sampson said Calgary’s effective reproduction number sits at 1.35, which means COVID numbers are multiplying “faster than we can afford.” For the virus to be under control, the measure needs to be lower than one.
The mayor noted some European countries are now returning to strict measures to contain the virus — in France, President Emmanuel Macron announced a second national lockdown Wednesday.
“We cannot get there. We need to help these businesses succeed,” Nenshi said.
He urged Calgarians to keep following advice that’s been in place for months now — wash or sanitize your hands frequently, wear a face covering in public, keep a two-metre distance from other people and keep your social “bubble” of people you don’t live with very small.
Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard tested positive for COVID-19 last week, and Nenshi said she told him she caught it from a small family gathering for Thanksgiving.
But, he added, she also said that because she’d been so vigilant about taking precautions with anyone she’d been in contact with, no one she’d seen within the two weeks before she started isolating tested positive.
“We have the ability to do that. It actually makes a difference for us to be thoughtful and careful.”
masmith@postmedia.com
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