By Troy Gillard

As active COVID-19 cases rise in Alberta…

“If you are sick, you need to stay home,” Dr. Hinshaw urges

Oct 5, 2020 | 7:51 PM

About 11 per cent of COVID-19 cases in Alberta are the result of people going to work or still going to social gatherings when symptomatic while awaiting test results.

“This is a significant risk, and is one of the factors causing our case numbers to rise,” Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said about the statistic during her COVID-19 update on Monday.

“I want to be clear: If you are sick, you need to stay home. If you are sick you should not go to social gatherings of any kind. This includes the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend.”

She urged Albertans to keep gatherings limited to family and cohort members, keep gatherings small, eat outdoors if possible and don’t share serving spoons or dishes.

Hinshaw acknowledged that staying home from work can create financial hardship for some, but that it must be done. She again asked employers to support their staff in staying home while sick.

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“We cannot prevent a second wave, or limit the spread of COVID in Alberta if we do not all take these basic steps,” she said, adding if the spread cannot be controlled together, additional restrictive measures will be considered.

The ongoing serology testing, which has studied close to 35,000 samples to examine a person’s blood to learn if they have antibodies to COVID-19, found that from early June to early August the proportion of people with antibodies did not increase.

Hinshaw said more research is needed and is underway, but there is one takeaway from the study so far.

“What this tells us is our swab testing program is almost certainly not missing large volumes of cases. It tells us that we are achieving what we set out to achieve, and the protective measures that Albertans have been using have prevented widespread transmission.”

She said we are protecting each other and must continue to do so.

“We cannot rely on hopes that sufficient antibodies slowly build up in enough of the population to limit spread of the virus after enough time has passed. We must continue to employ strategic measures to prevent transmission and protect our communities.”

Hinshaw said the recent increase in virus-related deaths is driven in large part by the outbreak at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. She also said the large number of cases over the weekend in Edmonton is concerning.

“We have seen an escalation of cases in Edmonton, an increase in the reproductive number to 1.3 last week and a rise in active cases to 894. We are taking this seriously and looking closely at what causes are driving this increase that we are seeing.”

Alberta has 1,783 active cases of COVID-19 as of Monday – the most since 1,811 active cases were reported on May 8.