By Chris Brown

Vaccine distribution update

Premier: Province could look at loosening restrictions in May

Apr 12, 2021 | 11:39 AM

Premier Jason Kenney put a loose timeline on when Alberta could look at relaxing public health restrictions put in place last week and what it will take to get there.

Kenney said that government’s projections show that by the end of May close to 50 per cent of Albertans would be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“At that point, I think we could look forward to raising capacity limits, to larger gatherings to potentially relaxing some business rules.” If Albertans rise to the challenge and do everything they can to stop social interaction and transmission I believe that we’ll be on track about a month from now to look back to relaxing measures as we have the protective effects of the vaccine.”

He said the restrictions are meant to “buy us time” so the vaccines can overtake the variants.

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He said it would be irresponsible to loosen restrictions now as new cases, active cases and hospitalizations continue to rise.

Kenney said the province is on track to potentially hit 2,000 average daily cases in the near future and quite possibly 20,000 active cases based on the active case to hospitalization ratio.

“If we were to hit for example 40,000 active cases in Alberta then we would be blowing well past the capacity of the health-care system.

A sustained decrease on daily new cases and total active cases is needed.

“Once we can see that on a sustained basis, let’s say for a period of a couple of weeks, then we can safely assume that the vaccines are starting to win, and then we can start moving to relax restrictions again.”

The province could be at about 72 per cent immunity by mid-September, said Kenney. That could potentially mean full recovery and no masking.

Kenney said vaccines remain the best hope for the relaxing of restrictions, saying the third wave of COVID-19 is hitting the province hard and in the race between variants and vaccines, the variants are winning.

The province has expanded its vaccine rollout recently.

Last week Phase 2B was expanded to include more eligible health conditions. On the weekend the first step of Phase 2C was announced, making 240,000 more health-care workers eligible as of Monday.

Medicine Hat’s COVID-19 immunization clinic at Higdon Hall was transitioned to a rapid flow clinic on April 9.

“Getting Albertans immunized plays a critical role in reducing the number of COVID-19 cases, limiting outbreaks, and the burden on our healthcare system,” says a statement from Alberta Health Services.

The rapid flow clinic will allow for 2,016 daily vaccinations at the local clinic, up from 672 in the original setup.

Staff will be redistributed so that no additional vaccinators are required at the site to meet the new daily total.

It was one of five across the province that changed to rapid flow, and new clinics have been opened in Calgary and Edmonton.

Kenney said that all Albertans will be offered a first dose of vaccine by the end of June provided the vaccines arrive as scheduled.

He said about 500,000 doses have arrived in the past couple of weeks.

About 120,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine are expected each week until the end of June when that will jump to 225,000 per week. Kenney said more Moderna vaccine doses are coming and they hope to get the first Johnson & Johnson doses, which are a single-dose vaccine, in early May.

Alberta has more than 1,300 pharmacies administering vaccines and there are more than 100 immunization sites in the province.

“We’re nearing the end of a long and tiring journey,” said Kenney.