Kenney, Hinshaw to provide COVID-19 update Thursday afternoon | The Canadian News

Alberta’s premier and chief medical officer of health will be providing an update on the COVID-19 situation in the province Thursday afternoon at 3:30 pm

That update will be streamed live in this article.

Thursday’s briefing comes a week after Premier Jason Kenney declared the beginning of the end of the Omicron-fueled wave of the pandemic in Alberta. The premier also announced virtual resources for Albertans to manage COVID-19 at home, the shift to team-based care models in hospitals and pandemic response units being set up in Edmonton and Calgary.

The pandemic response unit at the Kaye Edmonton Clinic was targeting Thursday to begin admitting patients, AHS said Tuesday.

“The opening of the PRU is a temporary measure and is one of several initiatives that will ensure our healthcare system can meet the increased demand caused by COVID-19,” a statement from AHS said.

2:00Free rapid COVID tests readily available in Saskatchewan, but scarce in Alberta

“Patients moved to the PRU could be patients recovering from COVID-19 who are no longer infectious or patients with less complex healthcare needs than those being cared for in traditional inpatient spaces.”

Thursday’s briefing also comes days after Health Minister Jason Copping announced Pfizer’s antiviral pill Paxlovid would be arriving in Alberta on Monday, but only 3200 courses of the treatment.

And on Wednesday, Alberta Health confirmed it had detected three cases of the BA.2 Omicron sub-variant.

Dubbed “stealth Omicron” for its ability to evade some types of detecting and sequencing, BA.2 is now the dominant strain in Denmark. Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said “it must be more contagious” on Wednesday.

The BA.2 sub-lineage of Omicron, which was first detected in November last year, was designated as a variant under investigation by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on Friday.

–With files from Saba Aziz, Global News and Reuters