By rdnewsNOW staff

relief for single people

Province loosens rules for single Albertans over holidays

Dec 22, 2020 | 3:19 PM

Premier Jason Kenney delivered an early Christmas present to Albertans on Wednesday.

“We’ve made some changes to the public health restrictions that will allow single Albertans to enjoy the holidays with loved ones in a safe way,” said the premier.

From Dec. 23 to Dec. 28, single Albertans may attend one event at another household, Kenney announced. During that same time, households can host up to two single people for an event.

He said the change was adopted based on advice from the minister of health, based on input from the chief medical officer of health by the COVID cabinet committee.

Kenney says the change “will make a world of difference for single Albertans who otherwise would not be able to visit their families over Christmas.”

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He said large social gatherings are still prohibited, explaining the huge spike seen in recent weeks resulted from such gatherings at Thanksgiving.

The premier also said there’s “absolutely no doubt” that progress would be lost and there would be a return to exponential growth and increasing pressure on the health-care system if large family gatherings were to take place this holiday season.

“We can cope with the current pressure, thanks to the dedication and remarkable of our frontline health-care workers. We can manage with 800 cases in hospital,” he said. “We can not manage with 2,500 COVID cases in hospital without beginning to deny some people care and without cancelling all non-urgent surgeries and non-COVID-related and non-urgent health care.”

To those who say the measures are based on exaggerated effects of PCR testing and other claims, Kenney said no.

“Alberta’s response is designed to prevent an overwhelming of the health-care system, which would force widespread cancellations of surgeries, which would itself have massive effects on people’s health unrelated to COVID,” Kenney said.

He added that’s not a theory or model, but a “simple, hard, numerical reality.”

Tremendous progress has been made fighting COVID-19 in the last couple of weeks, said Kenney and asked people to continue to observe the rules.

(With file from Chris Brown – CHAT News Today)