By Alex McCuaig

Going in wrong direction

Harsher health restrictions could come to Medicine Hat if numbers don’t go down

Nov 13, 2020 | 5:24 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Medicine Hat has rarely seen its active cases of COVID-19 reach double digits until two weeks ago, proving to be an exception in the province that resulted in few enhanced restrictions following the lifting of the province-wide lockdown earlier this year.

But with cases starting to creep up – more than doubling within the last two weeks – Friday saw the city join the growing list of communities under the provincial enhanced watch list.

Craig Jenne, infectious disease specialist at the University of Calgary Cummings School of Medicine, says the active case numbers across the province are moving in the wrong direction.

“In the province as a whole, we’ve gone from 200 cases at the beginning of October around Thanksgiving to now putting up an average of 700 cases a day,” said Jenne. “It’s now a matter of days and we’ll be over that threshold of a thousand cases.”

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Despite the enhanced restrictions announced on Thursday not going far enough for many, that doesn’t mean Albertans can’t take the extra steps themselves.

“Or doing the simple things we can do as opposed to trying to paint as close to the guideline as possible,” said Jenne.

Marcus Campbell, incoming president of the Medicine Hat and District Chamber of Commerce, says the organization has focused since the pandemic began on pushing out information to keep businesses and their employees safe.

It’s something which kept numbers low over the last several months.

“When the chips were down, we really got together as a community and not just from a Chamber standpoint but all organizations jumped on board to make sure we were keeping our citizens and our business owners protected,” said Campbell.

He adds now is the time for businesses to review the steps they are taking.

“I think we should be revisiting our health and safety programs,” he said. “This is a good opportunity to reaffirm our hand-washing practices and limiting the amount of people in our individual cohorts and limiting the amount of people coming into our businesses.”

Dr. Bill Ruzycki says the recently announced enhanced measures don’t go far enough.

For now, residents should get more serious about wearing masks.

“Because it’s a really minor thing to do. There is almost no medical reason not to wear a mask and it just reduces your risk. It would help so much,” he said.

If Hatters don’t step up their game, there is a real possibility of future restrictions being much harsher, said Ruzycki.