Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health defends the province’s controversial plan to end routine testing and isolation requirements, explaining how the success of vaccinations and the fall season ahead mean Alberta is ready to move forward
Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw says, 'It’s important to recognize that, because we can’t eliminate COVID, the question isn’t whether or not we change our approach. The question is when.'Alberta is preparing to shift away from the strategy that has defined the response to COVID-19 since the pandemic began early last year: test, trace and isolate.symptoms or test positive for the novel coronavirus to isolate as of Aug.
The other thing that’s important is that, when [the U.K.’s] cases started to spike, they really hadn’t started their. Those under 30 were just barely starting to be able to access the vaccine, whereas we’ve been able to offer vaccine to those 12 and older since late May. No other jurisdiction has ended testing, tracing and isolation. What do you say to criticism that Alberta is going off in its own direction?
If the argument is that this is an issue of timing, why are you confident that now is the time for Alberta, given that we have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country – far below jurisdictions that are continuing aggressive testing and tracing? We, tragically, have babies dying of congenital syphilis. There are opioid deaths happening. We have childhood vaccination rates dropping, cancer screening rates that need to be bolstered. There are all sorts of things that also impact Albertans every day that we simply haven’t had the ability to be on top of, because we’ve been focused on COVID as the number-one risk – which we had to do.
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