Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Wednesday that there are no specific numbers or cutoffs that the province would have to reach before it would pause or move backwards in its reopening plan.
The comments came after three separate media outlets, including Global News, asked Hinshaw to clarify what the benchmarks for metrics would be to put the emergency brake on Alberta’s Path Forward plan.
Instead, on Wednesday, Hinshaw reiterated how they province will be watching leading indicators of case counts, R value and positivity rate and whether there is a concerning growth in any of them.
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“It’s not about a specific number or crossing a particular threshold of a certain number of new cases in any given day.
“It’s about the change. It’s about the trajectory. It’s about the trends,” she said.
“So if those three trends indicate we’re seeing growth and we’re seeing sustained growth over time then that’s a very concerning metric that would mean we would need to pause or take a step backward in our path,” she said.
1:24 COVID-19: Alberta will be looking at 3 indicators in determining next steps for reopening
COVID-19: Alberta will be looking at 3 indicators in determining next steps for reopening
Epidemiologist Dr. Kirsten Fiest with the University of Calgary said earlier on Wednesday that the lack of detail on benchmarks gives her pause.
Fiest points to the benchmarks the province had set in the fall with hospitalizations and ICU admission, when it said that triggers for shutting down were if 50 per cent of the province’s COVID-19 ICU beds were full and if hospitalizations rose five per cent over the previous two weeks.
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“We sailed right past them and they never did anything,” Fiest said.
“One part of me is thinking: ‘It’s nice to know,’ the other part is [thinking], ‘But will anything happen if we get there?’”
2:11 Easing Alberta COVID-19 restrictions will be staged approach based on hospitalizations
Easing Alberta COVID-19 restrictions will be staged approach based on hospitalizations – Jan 29, 2021
Fiest said this type of information is important for the province to gain trust and confidence from the public.
“We need to have an understanding of what it will take to either move forward or move backwards. That’s the only way people will continue to comply with public health measures.”
The vague details around benchmarks for pausing or moving backwards in reopening are reminiscent of how the province was not previously releasing the virus’s R value and the lack of detail released about the province’s plan for Phase 2 of vaccine rollout.
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Premier Jason Kenney, when asked again about vaccine priorities on Wednesday, pointed the finger at the federal government and the issues surrounding vaccine supply.
“We’ll be releasing our priority lists for the next phases of the vaccine distribution program pretty soon but frankly we wanted to see what other provinces were doing,” he said.
“Secondly, I frankly don’t understand the huge rush because we haven’t even really gotten into Phase 1B yet. We don’t have enough vaccines and that is the issue.”
1:31 Alberta continuing to work on various phases of COVID-19 vaccine rollout plans
Alberta continuing to work on various phases of COVID-19 vaccine rollout plans – Feb 10, 2021
“People want to have some idea. They need to have some sense of when, in a systematic way, they are going to be able to get vaccinated and then continue on a bit with life,” Blake Murdoch, with the University of Alberta Health Law Institute, said.
John Church, a health policy expert at the University of Alberta, argues that the province has run into a public relations problem with the management of COVID-19, as well as other policy issues.
And he said that is driving the speed of which details are being released.
“The government is being very cautious about how they provide information and what information they are providing because they don’t want to, for example, over-promise on what they’re going to do with the rollout of the COVID vaccine and then have that fall apart for a variety of possible reasons,” Church said.
“They’ve had so much go wrong for them politically in the last several months, they are going to be pretty gun shy about doing anything prematurely that might add fuel to the fire around that.”
The issue with data, specifically COVID-19 data, comes at a time when the province is conducting a survey about the data it shares with the public.
The COVID-19 Data Study was launched on Friday and is intended to improve the quality of online information that is shared with Albertans.
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“Since the start of the pandemic, when Alberta launched the first comprehensive online dashboard in Canada, we have continually expanded and improved our approach,” said Alberta Health Spokesperson Tom McMillan.
“This sort of research is a best practice to make sure we are continually aware of better ways to present online information to meet Albertans’ needs.
“We want the information to be presented as clearly and usefully as possible.”
A survey will filter who is eligible to participate in the research, and there are currently no plans to release the findings.
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
