{"id":277676,"date":"2021-09-16T21:56:24","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T21:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/canada-must-learn-from-the-pandemic-crisis-in-parts-of-the-west-tam-says.html"},"modified":"2021-09-16T21:56:24","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T21:56:24","slug":"canada-must-learn-from-the-pandemic-crisis-in-parts-of-the-west-tam-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/canada-must-learn-from-the-pandemic-crisis-in-parts-of-the-west-tam-says.html","title":{"rendered":"Canada must ‘learn from’ the pandemic crisis in parts of the West, Tam says"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Canada’s chief public health officer says other\u00a0provinces need to learn from the pandemic crisis\u00a0in Alberta and Saskatchewan\u00a0if they want to avoid the calamity now afflicting health services in those provinces.<\/p>\n

“Don’t be complacent,” Theresa Tam said at this\u00a0morning’s media briefing. “We have to be highly vigilant on this virus. When you see it accelerating, act fast because, I think, we have to learn from the situation in Alberta and also in Saskatchewan at the moment.”<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

On Thursday, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney reintroduced strict and sweeping measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 \u2014 including a new\u00a0requirement that people provide\u00a0proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to gain entry to some businesses and social events.<\/p>\n

Alberta has more than 18,000 active COVID-19 cases \u2014 the most of any province right now. There were 877 people in the province’s\u00a0hospitals with the illness on Wednesday, 218 of them\u00a0in intensive care. Ontario, with a population more than three times Alberta’s, had 346 in hospital, with 188 in intensive care.<\/p>\n

“It is now clear that we were wrong, and for that I apologize,” Kenney said in announcing the new measures.<\/p>\n

Tam said that, despite the fact that a large majority of Canadians are\u00a0vaccinated, there are still seven million Canadians who have not been\u00a0vaccinated and intensive care units in areas where vaccination rates are low are filling up with people in their 40s and 50s.<\/p>\n

“When enough people are infected, even rarer events, in younger adults for example, are going to become common,” she said.<\/p>\n

Avoiding more school lockdowns<\/h2>\n

Tam said the Public Health Agency of Canada has looked at public health units across the country and found overwhelming evidence\u00a0that areas with low vaccination rates are experiencing surges in infections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said\u00a0the regions\u00a0of the country\u00a0struggling the most\u00a0with pandemic surges\u00a0are\u00a0in the West \u2014\u00a0Alberta, Northern Saskatchewan and northern and interior\u00a0parts of British Columbia.<\/p>\n

“If we want to keep schools open, for example, we have to make sure we manage the virus transmission … to protect kids who are under 12, who cannot get vaccinated at the moment,” she said.<\/p>\n

In parts of the country where increasing the vaccination rate is proving to be difficult, Tam said, authorities should impose public health restrictions \u2014 limiting\u00a0the number of people that can gather together, mandating the\u00a0wearing of\u00a0masks indoors, hand-washing\u00a0and physical distancing.<\/p>\n

If vaccination rates cannot be increased in those parts of the country and such\u00a0public health measures aren’t\u00a0introduced, Tam said, more restrictive measures \u2014\u00a0such as lockdowns and stay-at-home orders \u2014 may have to be implemented.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I think jurisdictions have to be prepared for that potential, but if you act early you can actually avoid those more restrictive measures,” she said.<\/p>\n

“But if needed, more restrictions may have to take place and my colleagues are hoping that this can be done in a more localized manner in order to avoid the significant impacts of widespread restrictions. I think it can be done.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tam said that while no provinces are immune from the highly transmissible delta variant of COVID-19, the provinces in Atlantic Canada have managed to control spikes in infection rates by acting “fast in putting down some localized measures.”<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Article source: https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/theresa-tam-learn-from-western-bad-example-1.6178287?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canada’s chief public health officer says other\u00a0provinces need to learn from the pandemic crisis\u00a0in Alberta and Saskatchewan\u00a0if they want to avoid the calamity now afflicting health services in those provinces. “Don’t be complacent,” Theresa Tam said at this\u00a0morning’s media briefing. “We have to be highly vigilant on this virus. When you see it accelerating, act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-277676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}