As Alberta sees a record number of COVID deaths, but offers of help are not accepted, experts ask: What is Jason Kenney waiting for?

EDMONTON – Calls are growing for Alberta to take more dramatic action to deal with its COVID-19 crisis, as Prime Minister Jason Kenney maintains what appears to be a wait-and-see approach to what is drawing the ire of health experts .

There are currently more than 20,000 COVID-19 cases in Alberta, with more than 1,000 people in the hospital. On Wednesday, the province recorded 34 deaths from COVID-19, a one-day record during the Alberta pandemic battle.

Aid is offered from the federal and provincial governments for Alberta but, as of this week, Kenney has not formally accepted it. He also rejected demands from doctors and health experts to implement a switch lock to stem the tide of the fourth wave.

According to the province’s own early warning system, Alberta is about three to four weeks away from the worst case taking hold in late October. That would mean that the 380 available ICU beds would be filled, forcing healthcare workers to choose, according to a protocol, who receives intensive care treatment and who does not.

“I don’t see how we’re going to avoid it,” says Dr. Noel Gibney, professor emeritus in the department of intensive care medicine at the University of Alberta.

The province has already postponed thousands of surgeries.

Gibney said that in his view, Kenney’s track record during the pandemic has been to kick the can down the road before finally taking action.

“It raises the question of who is advising him medically,” Gibney said, “because he seems to keep making the wrong decisions.”

Gibney said Kenney waited too long to implement vaccine passports and public health restrictions in September after a skyrocketing increase in cases and hospitalizations in August.

This week, Kenney said he had told Newfoundland and Labrador to postpone sending health workers to help, even though there was an offer on the table.

Federal support with personnel and air travel, including assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces, is also available, but has also not been leveraged, and while some ICUs in parts of the province are beyond their maximum capacity, Alberta has yet to dispatch ICU. patients to other provinces such as Ontario, which has opened its doors to receive them.

On Wednesday, Kenney spoke with Prime Minister Justin Tudeau by phone and discussed the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a reading of the call, Kenney thanked the prime minister for the offer of help and requested that the federal government send more single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccines to Alberta, citing a desire among Albertans to receive those specific punctures in areas of low absorption of vaccines. . Trudeau agreed to help.

Gibney said Alberta needs to take advantage of all that help and establish a wide-ranging circuit breaker lockout to help ease the pressure on hospitals.

Taking those steps, Gibney said, would likely reduce cases by two weeks and stop the worst-feared cases in the province’s hospitals, which are already overloaded.

“Why wait?” Gibney said. “Why let the ICUs get overwhelmed? It just defies logic. “

As of Wednesday, Alberta Health Services said the province’s North Zone, an area that includes Fort McMurray, was operating at more than 100 percent capacity in ICUs.

Overall, Alberta has 370 functioning ICU spaces, including 197 emergency beds. There are 318 people in the ICU, the vast majority are unvaccinated COVID-19 patients.

This week, Kenney rejected calls in a letter from healthcare professionals, including Gibney and the province’s former medical director of health, to impose a strict shutdown of circuit breakers in the province, leading to bar closings, gyms, indoor dining rooms and public facilities. .

During an appearance on a weekend radio show, Kenney said such a blockade “would not make sense for the 80 percent of the population that is vaccinated.”

Kenney has also said that unvaccinated people would likely not comply.

On Wednesday, the Canadian Medical Association also called for such closures in Alberta and Saskatchewan, another province that sets records in dealing with a similar COVID-19 crisis among unvaccinated people.

Dr. Katharine Smart, president of the national group, urged the provincial and federal governments to take immediate action.

“This is beyond anything the health care system has faced in modern times,” Smart told The Canadian Press.

“What we are seeing now is essentially no ability to provide any other intensive care medicine beyond caring for people with COVID. So, in essence, the health care system has already collapsed. “

Kenney has maintained that the province is preparing for the worst and will keep its options open while looking at the data.

On September 20, Alberta launched its vaccine passport system and implemented some public health restrictions to help slow the spread. The prime minister has said that he wants to give those measures time to work and that the government has even contacted hospitals in the United States to see if, in an extreme scenario, they could take some patients from Alberta.

While experts like Gibney say Kenney should immediately bring in healthcare workers from Newfoundland to help ICUs and send patients to Ontario to free up space, it has yet to happen.

“Our basic commitment is to do what is absolutely necessary to prevent the worst case scenario in our health care system,” Kenney said during a news conference this week.

“If we believe that it is necessary to supplement our system here, we will certainly ask the federal government to deploy as many medical personnel as it can.”

But many health workers say the time has come to seek help.

With files from The Canadian Press



Reference-www.thestar.com

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