CALGARY – Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health apologizes for causing “confusion, fear or anger” after communicating the government’s plan to eliminate health measures that were still in effect in this province province.
In a note sent Wednesday to various media, Dr. Deena Hinshaw indicates that her comments may have led Albertans to believe that for her, the pandemic was over. However, she assures us that this is not the message she wanted to communicate.
She says lifting quarantine requirements, testing for asymptomatic people and contact tracing will allow the government to focus on other issues that threaten the health of Albertans, including the opioid crisis and syphilis. .
Dr Hinshaw maintains that quarantine, an “incredibly disruptive” measure, she said, is no longer necessary with vaccination. She also notes that the threat is low to the health of children, especially those under the age of 12, who are not eligible for vaccination.
Close contacts of people tested positive are no longer traced and they are no longer required to self-isolate. From August 16, even those infected will no longer be legally required to self-isolate.
Prime Minister Jason Kenney and Health Minister Tyler Shandro had previously made it clear that the lifting of restrictions had been recommended by Dr Hinshaw, but that they agreed with her plan. This decision, however, was criticized by experts across the country.
In an open letter, published earlier Wednesday, a group of 10 Edmonton doctors believed Alberta was going against recommendations from Health Canada, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization.
They also highlighted the threats posed by the Delta variant and the possibility that pediatric and adult intensive care units could be overwhelmed if Alberta continues its widespread deconfinement. “We are concerned about the speed of these changes and that you have not provided any scientific data to Albertans to justify these unprecedented actions,” the doctors write.
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