WESTLOCK — No gatherings, indoor or outdoor, are allowed starting today and masks have been made mandatory across the province, announced Alberta premier Jason Kenney today.
“The bottom line is that we must have a coordinated province-wide approach right now.”
Starting Dec. 13, restaurants will close for dining and move to take-out only, all entertainment spaces — including theatres, bingo halls, casinos, libraries, museums, trade shows — personal and wellness services — nail or hair salons, barbers, piercing parlors — and all recreational facilities will close.
Also on Sunday, all staff must start working from home unless employers determine physical presence is required.
Malls and retail can stay open, but capacity is limited at 15 per cent. The same limit applies to churches, where masks and social distancing are mandatory. Congregations are encouraged to move services online or to drive-in.
Only farm operations and rental accommodations are exempt from mandatory mask use. Kenney said most Albertans have been using masks voluntarily but now “everyone has a civic duty to do their part.”
Ski hills and outdoor skating rinks can also remain open. Hotels are allowed too, but they will close restaurants, pools, or any other public facilities.
All measures are province-wide and will last at least four weeks. There are no changes to schools or childcare.
People who live alone are still allowed to socialize with the two people in their cohort. The gathering ban doesn’t apply to co-parenting or childcare situations.
These are “last resort” measures, trying to balance “lives and livelihoods,” Kenney said, but the exponential growth in cases is a “hard mathematical reality,” despite what he called Alberta’s early successes in testing, personal protective equipment provisions and technology use.
The measures announced in November failed to deliver, said Dr. Deena Hinshaw yesterday, and cases have been steadily increasing. “I will be blunt: so far, we are not bending the curve back down.”
Kenney said at the time the provincial government was balancing health measures with personal freedoms. Last week, in a Facebook Live video he accused the media of “a drive toward hysteria” when covering the pandemic.
Today, he said without the measures “hundreds or thousands more Albertans” could die.
Currently, Alberta continues to top the list of active cases across Canada with 20,388, compared to Ontario’s 16,034 and Quebec’s 14,602, despite having only a third of the population.
Over the weekend, new records were broken in the daily case count increase: 1,877 on Saturday.
Today, 1,727 new cases were identified out of 19,000 tests conducted for a 9.41 per cent positivity rate.
According to statistics presented by Kenney at the press conference, since Nov. 1 hospitalizations have grown by more than 600 per cent from 115 to 654 today, and ICU by 300 per cent from 28 to 112 patients.
“If we do not succeed in bending down the curve, we will see these hospitalization numbers continue to rise,” Kenney said.
Building additional hospital capacity, he said, has “catastrophic” impacts on Albertans: “that is not an opinion, that is a fact,” Kenney said, and pointed to the United States’ “tragic reality of uncontrolled growth.”
Targeting regions is no longer effective, since almost every local geographic area sits above an active case rate of 50 per 100,000 people, the threshold they determined in the spring.
Edmonton zone shutters more surgeries
The surge in cases has also prompted Alberta Health Services to postpone 60 per cent of non-urgent scheduled surgeries, contemplate a 40 per cent reduction in diagnostic imaging and other clinical services, and reduce ambulatory services.
“These steps are yet another reminder of why today’s measures are needed and how COVID-19’s impact reaches far beyond those who test positive,” said Alberta chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
Surgeries will move ahead for major and minor trauma, urgent cancer, cardiac and vascular cases.
The entire Royal Alexandra Hospital has been placed on a watch status. Thirteen units were on outbreak or watch and 102 COVID-19 patients are hospitalized there.
Grants for small and medium business
The small and medium business relaunch grant has been topped off to $20,000 maximum eligibility, from the $5,000 announced in the spring.
The eligibility threshold has been lowered to 30 per cent revenue from the original 50 per cent.
“Many of our friends … are impacted here today because many of us decided that we can ignore orders, we can not stay away from each other. I’m asking each and every one of you that may not like these new health orders, that may not want to do this, to think about every single person in your community that is impacted in a dramatic way by being shut down,” said jobs, economy and innovation minister Doug Schweitzer.
He said that reports are suggesting 40 per cent of businesses across Alberta can’t operate without financial support from the government. In the spring, 17,000 businesses applied for the relaunch grant and Schweitzer said another 15,000 qualify under the lowered threshold.
Kenney said in total, the provincial government will be spending over $1 billion in COVID-19 relief.
More to come.
