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By Scott Roblin

Up more than 4,000 per cent in four weeks

Infectious disease expert says Medicine Hat hospital could be overwhelmed

Aug 20, 2021 | 11:05 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Cases of COVID-19 continue to climb sharply in our city, brought on by the increasingly contagious delta variant.

Active cases in Medicine Hat have risen by more than 4,000 per cent in just the last four weeks alone.

Just one month ago Medicine Hat was sitting at 11 active cases. Now that number has ballooned to well over 500 cases locally.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Gabriel Fabreau saying he’s quite concerned with the exponential growth of the virus in our city.

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Originally from Medicine Hat, Dr. Fabreau says his biggest worry is what this skyrocketing in cases will have on the local hospital system.

“The problem with exponential growth is once you get into, I mean the whole thing is exponential growth. But once you get into a vertical ascent of case counts and hospitalizations there’s no health system in the world that can catch up to that,” he says. “And so I would say looking at Medicine Hat’s vaccination rates currently … it’s 48.5 per cent of people under the age of 40 are fully vaccinated. There are more than enough people to overwhelm the hospital system there.”

Mayor Ted Clugston said this week that council is not considering a new mandatory mask bylaw. He added the metric he looks at is the mortality of COVID-19 rather than active cases.