CALGARY (660 NEWS) – With Alberta re-opening, experts say the province needs to take the new COVID-19 variants into consideration as they decide when and how to ease restrictions.
“You’re adding oxygen to the fire,” said Dr. James Talbot with the University of Alberta.
Talbot explains there’s no room for error with the risk of some of the variants spreading.
“You’re telling the new variant, ‘go ahead, multiply as much as you want’. That means the decline will be steeper than it was before.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Craig Jenne with the University of Calgary said there isn’t any hard metric of how many variant cases are needed before restrictions change.
“I think we really need to be looking at the big picture and the emergence of community-level variant transmission could very well change that big picture. It may mean we have a surge of cases coming in the next couple of weeks and that’s something we would have to be prepared for.”
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Alberta Health has so far identified 51 cases of COVID-19 variants, which have a 50 per cent higher infection rate than the previous strain.
In the latest COVID-19 update on Monday, Dr. Deena Hinshaw stressed the importance of staying vigilant when it came to reducing the spread of the virus.
Jenne admits, many Albertans are tired of hearing this but it needs to happen.
“We are all tired of this, we are frustrated. If we being to ease up on these guidelines, if we choose to start ignoring them or taking them lightly, we have seen, unfortunately, these variants will exploit that. They do not need much of an opportunity to trigger an outbreak.”
Last week, the UCP government announced it was using hospitalization numbers to determine whether to relax some restrictions starting Feb. 8.
Dr. Christopher Mody with the University of Calgary said while hospitalizations are a good way to determine when to ease restrictions, the same can’t be said for deciding when to tighten the rules.
That’s because it can be weeks between when cases are identified and when people are sick enough to need a hospital.
Mody said if decision-makers wait until hospitalizations rise before acting, it’s too late.
As of Monday, 7,387 active cases of COVID-19 exist in the province with 556 people in hospital, 102 of which are in intensive care.
Over 115,000 people have recovered from the virus since March 2020.
-With files from The Canadian Press
