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By Alex McCuaig

Households should develop plans

No time to relax safety protocols in Medicine Hat

Apr 24, 2020 | 4:49 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Medicine Hat’s director of emergency management is warning the public that now is not the time to soften their adherence to COVID-19 safety protocols in light of a surge in new cases in Alberta Health Services’ South Zone.

“This is the worst time to relax your guard,” said Merrick Brown. “Given the fact we have some outbreaks that we are aware of that are fairly close to us, this is the time we need to be extra diligent, extra vigilant in this process.”

Brown added multi-person households should be developing plans to quarantine to protect other residents within the home if someone should be diagnosed with COVID-19.

“What we don’t want is someone to have someone who is self-isolating – self-isolating in their actual home – and interacting with all these other people in your home that are then leaving the house,” said Brown.

The heightened awareness of the issue stems from AHS’s South Zone seeing a spike in the rate of per capita infections which has seen the region go from one of the lowest rates to surpasses all but the Calgary Zone.

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South Zone medical officer of health, Dr. Shobhit Maruti says the best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is through the protocols widely circulated – wash your hands thouroguhly and frequently, stay home if sick, try to limit shopping to once a week and maintain physical distancing.

As for the situation in Brooks as testing in the community ramps up, Maruti says AHS is trying to ascertain the amount of cases in the city.

“With community transmission, what they’ve tried to do is to have what they call point prevalence testing,” said Maruit. “So the goal is to identify anyone who is asymptomatic to see if they end up being positive so that they can be physically and socially distance and isolated so they don’t spread to others.”

As of Friday, Brooks has 387 active cases of COVID-19 with the city reporting two deaths.

There are 12 active cases in Medicine Hat and 11 listed as recovered.