Talk of the Town on Removing COVID-19 Restrictions

Talk of the Town on Removing COVID-19 Restrictions

Rosanne Fortier - News Correspondent

Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw announced that starting on August 16, Albertans who test positive for COVID-19 will not be required to isolate or quarantine, there will be no more contact tracing, and asymptomatic COVID-19 testing, and testing for people with COVID-19 symptoms. Local citizens weighed in on the decision this past week.

Velma Sample, a senior citizen, said she feels a little bit nervous about these changes as their generation has never experienced anything like this before so they don’t have the knowledge. “So, it is hard to say what is best and what will happen if they aren’t careful anymore. But at the same time, I suppose there needs to be a time that they open up everything and remove the restrictions as quite a few people have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19. I am hoping that everything will turn out alright.”

Kim Kenward feels the Alberta Government needs to continue to monitor the data in terms of what’s happening with COVID-19 in order to support maintaining these restrictions. “You can’t decide to not test people. You have to keep accumulating data. You can’t assume that this is just like any other flu or respiratory infectious thing because they don’t have the data.

Also, I don’t think they should make the call not to have people isolate until they have the data to support the fact that they aren’t going to go through another huge wave. I think the current policy is more optimistic politics than actual hard science.”

Nancy Mereska said she doesn’t agree with any of the lifting of restrictions. “I feel it is too soon given the Delta variant that rearing its ugly head in the States, and we are getting more and more cases here in Alberta and in British Columbia as far as I know from watching the news.

So, I am not in favor of what they are doing at all. Then people like me who have underlying health conditions, I don’t feel safe from this, and I will be very cautious. I will be staying at home as much as I ever did.

I don’t agree at all with Dr. Hinshaw. I think she has gone from being our Chief Medical Officer to being a Conservative political person, and I think that she needs to listen to the Minister of Health of Canada, Patty Hajdu, who is asking Hinshaw to reconsider her opinion because Alberta has been a hot spot for COVID-19 all along. I think they should be more cautious, I really do! I am really fearful that with the early opening and the early closing of all restrictions that we are going to see another surge!”

Nancy forwarded an article by Shu Ting Lang who compared COVID-19 with the Spanish Flu where he stated that both COVID-19 and 1918 influenza pandemic similarly caused significant negative impacts on the global economy, affecting international relations and had considerable delay in its diagnosis, treatments, and vaccines.

The 1918 influenza affected less than half the countries and the most vulnerable groups were healthy adults between the ages of 25 years and 40 years, while COVID- 19 has affected nearly all countries and the most vulnerable groups are adults 65 years of age with underlying health conditions.

As a widow with six children, Mary McCauley said this news terrified her to the core. “If I get sick who will take care of my children? They will be exposed to COVID- 19 at school and in the community. Although most of us are fully vaccinated in my home many of my children are under the age of 12. They cannot be vaccinated at this time. COVID is no joke. I have personally known six people who got the virus; two had to have intubations and they have long-term effects. We need to monitor the situation, especially with all these variants coming out. COVID is not over yet.”