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High-risk Albertans urged to get another vaccine dose as COVID-19
cases ticking up
(HTM) Source
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After trending downward for several months, COVID-19 is on the upswing
in Alberta once again.
The province's respiratory virus dashboard shows a number of key
indicators, including case counts, hospitalization numbers and
positivity rates, are ticking up.
"Many jurisdictions in Canada have seen a slight bump in late April in
the number of COVID cases, the positivity rate and also in their
wastewater monitoring," said Dr. Dan Gregson, an infectious diseases
specialist in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of
Calgary.
There are likely a number of factors at play, he said.
"It's a combination of waning immunity and the virus becoming more
transmissible and escaping your immune system that's been adapted to
the prior strain."
The latest data from Alberta Health shows 114 people hospitalized with
SARS CoV-2, an increase of more than two dozen in two weeks. Six
patients are in intensive care.
At the University of Alberta Hospital, infectious diseases physician
Dr. Stephanie Smith said the latest uptick isn't translating into a
spike in severe COVID cases, but she is seeing a clear trend.
"What we are seeing is we have people being admitted for other things
and then becoming infected with COVID in the hospital because of
visitors or sharing a room," she said.
"Most of them are not getting severely ill. Obviously there are
exceptional cases of patients that are severely immunocompromised that
can get severe disease. But we do have treatments to try and prevent
disease from becoming severe for those that pick up COVID in the
hospital."
According to Smith, that's exacerbated by the strain on hospitals and
overcrowding.
"We are so overcapacity in our hospitals, and that means patients are
being put into hallways, and we have three people in rooms that are
designed for two people, and that makes it really hard to prevent the
spread of infection," said Smith.
"I would say that's probably our biggest challenge right now and why
we're seeing transmission."
The Alberta Health Services website shows seven hospitals were
reporting COVID-19 outbreaks as of April 30.
An enhanced masking directive, designed to prevent COVID-19
transmission, is no longer in place in AHS facilities.
Smith said many health workers on the wards where she works still wear
masks routinely.
The province's COVID-19 death toll continues to rise. A total of 552
Albertan's have died due to the illness since Aug. 27, according to
publicly available data.
## Know your risk
Both doctors are urging Albertans to know their level of risk for
severe disease and plan their immunizations accordingly.
"The important thing is for people who are high risk to really make
sure that their vaccine is up to date. That's the easiest thing to
do," said Gregson.
"If you're really high risk and you're going to places where there's
lots of people, you can mask to reduce your risk."
High-risk Albertans — including seniors, immunocompromised individuals
and First Nations, Metis and Inuit people — became eligible for
additional doses of the XBB.1.5 vaccine on April 15, if it's been six
months since their last shot.
According to Gregson, while COVID transmission dropped for a number of
months, it never went away.
"We have constant background noise that's occurring all the time and
then we have waves. The last big wave was in the fall of 2023.…
Whether or not over the summer that goes down to zero or not, we'll
wait and see," he said.
"It would be nice to have a break from this."
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