Jason Kenney calls on Albertans to stop partying amid rise in COVID-19 cases
Premier says Alberta hasn't made a final decision on whether to adopt federal COVID Alert app
Alberta's premier says the spread of COVID-19 could be better controlled in the province if people would stop partying.
"COVID-19 loves parties," Premier Jason Kenney said at a news conference Monday.
"And so, please, if you're doing that, knock it off. Because it might be your grandma, your grandfather, who ultimately gets infected in a nursing home.
"It might be your mom or dad, who's been waiting for a year or two for surgery, who gets that delayed by months again because we have more COVID people going into hospitals."
Kenney warned Alberta Health Services may need to cancel elective surgeries, as it did in the spring, to make more room for potential COVID patients, should case numbers continue to escalate.
When data was last released on Friday, Alberta saw 622 new COVID-19 cases — a new daily high increase for the province. It pushed the number of active cases in Alberta to more than 5,000. As of Friday, 140 people were in hospital with COVID-19 and 323 people had died.
"We're all fed up with this," Kenney said of the pandemic. "But now, more than ever, we need to take this seriously. And the single biggest thing people could do is just stop with the private parties and the social gatherings."
Respecting public health orders that limit private gatherings to 15 people in Edmonton and Calgary would help get the spread under control, he said.
The premier also the provincial government "hasn't made a final decision" about whether the province should sign on to a federal pandemic tracing phone app.
Alberta health officials are reluctant to adopt the federal government's COVID Alert application because it does not feed information to contact tracers in Alberta, he said.
Kenney said the provincial app, called ABTraceTogether, connects to public health's contact tracing system, which makes it a more effective public health tool.
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on 630 CHED radio that Alberta's government was standing in the way of the province adopting the federal app. When a user voluntarily notes they have tested positive for COVID-19, the app notifies other app users who were nearby that they may have been exposed.
B.C. and Alberta are the only provinces that have resisted adopting the federal app, which has been available for three months. B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has also said it would be of limited use.
However, Alberta's app didn't work well at first. It didn't function on iPhones unless the app was open and the phone unlocked, which could guzzle battery power.
Kenney said that problem has been resolved and the ABTraceTogether app is now more user friendly.
Last week, Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro said the province was waiting on the federal government to provide a way to migrate provincial app users over to the federal app.
He said 247,000 Albertans had downloaded the provincial app, and the government didn't want to lose touch with those users.
Opposition wants more aggressive approach from government
NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Monday the government is relying too much on people exercising personal responsibility to prevent the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
"We are very troubled that this premier is essentially sleepwalking this province into an unavoidable economic lockdown, which would be bad for the economy," Notley told reporters at the legislature.
The Opposition has been pushing a list of six measures Notley says the government could take that could help slow the spread of the virus without shuttering businesses or public services.
The NDP want Alberta Health to hire about 500 more contact tracers, which would bring the team of people hunting down those potentially exposed to 1,300 workers.
Notley wants a central agency to take over long-term and continuing care centre staffing during the pandemic, as British Columbia has done. That would ensure care centres are well staffed and employees are paid uniform wages no matter where they work, she said.
The one-site rule limiting workers to a single care home in Alberta has hit some snags.
The Opposition also wants faster turnaround times for testing and for the government to halt its plan to outsource 11,000 health support worker jobs to the private sector.
During question period, Kenney said his government is taking some of these steps, including efforts to shorten waits for test results, and trying to hire 350 more contact tracers.