Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes is standing by his opposition to health restrictions, throughout the pandemic and now as local cases spike, suggesting the province should immediately fix ICU capacity issues instead of mandating vaccines.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Area politicians who vocally opposed health restrictions or vaccination requirements are sticking to their guns as Alberta government reimposes measures to quell a rise in COVID cases they say could overwhelm hospitals.
Independent MLA Drew Barnes restated his position Thursday morning that the health-care system requires more flexibility and potentially private investment to handle pandemic surges, not a vaccine verification system.
“While such a divisive policy may help distract Albertans from Jason Kenney’s failures, it will not fix the capacity issues in our health-care system,” Barnes stated in a release, which also calls for the premier to resign.
He suggests the province directly manage hospitals to create COVID-only wards, scrap a mandate for health-care workers to be vaccinated, ban vaccine requirements by all employers and create a long-term health plan to absorb “seasonal” surges of COVID cases.
A local public health advocate agrees the government has mishandled the situation, but said Barnes’s plan to ramp up capacity isn’t possible.
“You can’t build a hospital in a week, or suddenly have a bunch of nurses,” said Allison Van Dyke, chair of the Palliser chapter of Friends of Medicare. She said a history of cuts to public health care have left a “system without any slack,” and investment is needed.
“No one could have foretold the pandemic, but we’ve been in it for 18 months,” she said. “They should have had a plan, but they denied reality.”
On Wednesday, Kenney, Health Minister Tyler Shandro and AHS officials announced new capacity restrictions for indoor businesses, restaurants, churches and social events, with some exceptions for those that employ a vaccination verification system.
That is meant to reduce transmission and avoid new cases – a percentage of which require more intensive care spaces, which administrators say are filling up rapidly with many more cases to come.
On Wednesday AHS president Verna Yiu announced that Alberta is soliciting help from other provinces to send equipment, staff and medicine to avoid the need for triage protocols to be put in place in two weeks, according to current modelling.
At that point, doctors across the province would employ a standardized system to determine which patients receive a portion of limited resources.
A total of 48 Hatters have died from the deadly respiratory illness, including three on Thursday and 19 since Sept. 1.
“The rise in the number of COVID-19 patients this fall was entirely predictable, and the government’s failure to adequately prepare is negligent,” Barnes wrote, stating that he supports front-line healthcare workers. “This is a failure of management. This is a failure of government.”
Barnes also states the government should “rescind layoffs” of staff caught in a mandatory vaccination policy announced by AHS on Aug. 31.
It doesn’t come into effect until Oct. 31.
